I am from Pendeton, OR and lost my employment when the state decided to close the psychiatric hospital here.  Tax payers should be outraged by this, as the closure of this facility wastes all the tax dollars spent constructing this hospital.  Not to mention the thousands of dollars that were spent moving employees from Pendleton if they decided to uproot their families in order to keep their state employment.  This of course does nothing to account for the lost tax revenue from the future wages earned by these employees and the dollars that they spend annually in the community.  

In addition to all of this, what tax payers don't realize is that the cost to the state when a mentally ill person is waiting for a bed is much, much higher per day than what it costs in a state operated facility.  That is a lot of money wasted in one form or another on the romantic notion of deinstitutionalization but the reality is that there are truly ill individuals out there that need that type of care.