Companies that provide the mental health service called community support were in Raleigh today to ask legislators to spare mental health programs from cuts.

Though the company representatives said they were concerned about mental health spending in general, they talked mostly about the controversial mental health service community support, Lynn Bonner reported.

Legislators are discussing cuts to community support over the next two years as part of a plan to phase-out the service.

A legislative report this week said that the state wasted more than $635 million on the service from April 2006 to February 2009 because it was poorly planned and monitored.

The company representatives said the decision to cut community support is political, and that their clients are being punished for problems caused by others.

Community support works when it's done properly, said Andy Anderson, president of Community Innovations Inc. in Whiteville.

"The simplest way of trying to fix a problem is total elimination," he said. "That's not the way to do it." He equated the decision to phase-out community support because of past abuses with tearing up Interstate 95 because a driver got a speeding ticket.

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