The only thing that Republican and Democratic governors seem to agree on is that no one likes the state hospital or the state forensic units, housed respectively at Warm Springs and Galen.

Both are old. Both are expensive. Both are located away from many other “populated” places in Montana. And, both seem based on something borrowed from decades earlier, rather than facilities meant to address a growing mental health and addiction problem in Montana.

For years, we’ve heard lawmakers talk about the need to get away from large institutional settings like Warm Springs and placing patients and services to places closer to patients’ homes. We like the phrase “community-based” providers instead of “state-run institutions” and it’s easy to see why.