It’s easy to jump on the bandwagon and endorse state leaders’ demand that all state agencies cut their budgets by 5 percent to address a deficit of $18 billion to $20 billion, but the hard truth is this neither fully addresses the deficit nor justifies cuts in areas where our state is already severely lacking. Perhaps no category proves the latter more than the sprawling needs in mental health care.

If unwisely implemented, millions in cuts proposed by the Texas Department of State Health Services could wind up being penny-wise now, pound-foolish down the road, costing us more not only in dollars but grief and hardship.

Veteran Tribune-Herald staff writer Cindy V. Culp’s story this week highlights how $90 million of the $246 million in proposed cuts would harm services at community Mental Health Mental Retardation centers, including the Heart of Texas Region MHMR Center, reducing long-term care and follow-up treatment for many who need it. It may spawn more headaches for law enforcement as well.

Barbara Tate, executive director of the area MHMR Center, says cuts would trim $660,000 locally each year, likely reducing the number of beds at the relatively new crisis center the MHMR oversees in Waco and limiting care to those under certain diagnoses or in need of emergency care.

If legislators agree, this could also exacerbate the situation involving Waco’s privately run psychiatric hospital, the DePaul Center, by reducing the payments that MHMR makes to reimburse the hospital for treating MHMR patients. The hospital is already reducing the number of beds for adults because of the money it loses for patients brought in by law enforcement agencies.

All this, in turn, could compel law enforcement personnel to spend yet more time driving patients all around Texas, even as far as El Paso, trying to find facilities to care for them. Tate says, for instance, that cuts would reduce beds available at the Austin State Hospital by at least 8 percent.

Which returns us to our basic thesis: Not all cuts to state agencies will exact the same sort of pain. Some could handle greater cuts. On the other hand, mental health spending now can cut more costly problems such as incarceration and hospitalization in the long term. Our representatives, Charles “Doc” Anderson and Jim Dunnam, say they realize this and we should expect their actions to reflect this aim in the many months ahead. We should expect the same of newly elected state Sen. Brian Birdwell as well.

To permit these cuts as proposed will make a trying situation worse, hindering law enforcement and throwing into greater turmoil some of the most vulnerable of all Texans.