State Mental Health officials will have as much as $14 million to buy and renovate buildings to house and treat the mentally ill once the State Hospital complex on Bull Street is sold.

A temporary law approved last month allows most state agencies to keep half of what they make from the sale of property. The windfall money must go to pay for nonrecurring expenses, such as building improvements.

That means half the profit from the planned sale of the 178-acre State Hospital grounds on Columbia’s Bull Street will go to the Department of Mental Health.

The agency has considered spending $2 million to renovate the now-closed Crafts-Farrow State Hospital on Farrow Road near I-20 and moving Bull Street patients there.

About 70 of the most severely mentally ill children in the state remain hospitalized at the William S. Hall Psychiatric Institute on Bull Street. But the last patients are supposed to be moved off the grounds by July 2006.

“We were getting concerned that they were being kicked off the Bull Street property without a capital improvement plan,” said state Rep. Tracy R. Edge, R-Horry, chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees state spending on health care.

Mental Health officials have not said whether they can meet the July 2006 deadline, but they welcome the Legislature’s help.

“This gives us more options,” said Allison Evans, chairwoman of the S.C. Mental Health Commission, which oversees the Mental Health department. “We have a list of things that need to be done.

“We will have no trouble putting new money to work.”

If the agency can’t meet the deadline to sell the Bull Street campus and move, Edge said, lawmakers likely will extend the temporary law for another year.

The help follows years of financial troubles at the Mental Health department:

• A steady drumbeat of budget cuts since 2000 have seen its budget drop from $190 million to $168 million last year.

• Nearly 1,000 employees have been cut from the department, and 25 more are scheduled to be let go by the end of this month.

• As the agency committed itself to community-based care — rather than institutional care like the State Hospital complex — officials acknowledge they have not found the proper mix of beds and buildings required to serve its patients.

• Statewide, hospital officials have complained their emergency rooms have become dumping grounds for the mentally ill because there is nowhere else for them to go.

Last month, embattled Mental Health director George Gintoli said he would resign to take a private-sector mental health job in Florida.

Edge said relations between Gintoli and the Legislature had become “strained,” and he welcomed new leadership. Efforts to reach Gintoli for comment were unsuccessful last week.

In January, Mental Health officials devised a plan that would:

• Move most of the patients from the State Hospital to Crafts-Farrow.

• Transfer girls in residential treatment at the State Hospital to private facilities in Charleston or Florence.

• Buy and renovate facilities needed to house and treat two other groups of mentally ill children who are under state care.

But portions of the plan are being revised.

“It is premature to speculate how the proceeds would be used, and we have made no plans at this point,” department spokesman John Hutto said.

Critics have been skeptical of the agency and its dealings. They said that, while problems persist, Mental Health has a hefty year-to-year carryover of budget dollars, and the department is sometimes difficult to deal with.

The Budget and Control Board said the department had a $27 million carryover at the end of the 2003-04 budget year.

Edge said lawmakers are aware of the carryover accounts, but that much of the money is earmarked for operational expenses. He said the agency has been working diligently to get off the State Hospital site, and now that new money will be available, real planning can begin.

“They couldn’t do that before,” Edge said. “I know there is $14 million of need out there regardless of the move from the State Hospital property.”

Not everyone is on board with the Legislature’s move. Gov. Mark Sanford and State Treasurer Grady Patterson oppose the temporary law. Sanford vetoed it, but the Legislature easily overrode his veto.

“We don’t think it makes sense,” Sanford spokesman Will Folks said. “We felt (proceeds) should go back to the General Assembly to address the most pressing needs of the state.”

To that, Edge replies, “That’s what we did.”

Reach Burris at (803) 771-8398 or rburris@thestate.com