Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The state institutions for people with disabilities are failing to find community-based homes for many patients who want them, and have hired several state school employees who should've been ineligible because of previous abuse and neglect records, according to a state audit released Monday.

The auditor's report indicates 70 percent of patients – or 449 of 644 – who asked to leave the state schools in fiscal year 2007 weren't granted their wishes.

And about half of the 5,000 residents in the state schools had not expressed any living preference by the end of that year, according to the report.

Texas has more people with profound disabilities living in large, state-run institutions than anywhere else in the country.

Officials with the Department of Aging and Disability Services say the agency is "dramatically improving" the process for moving state school residents out into the community. Since the beginning of this year, officials have contracted with community mental retardation authorities to discuss alternative living arrangements with state school residents, and to take them on tours of such facilities.

The audit also found 10 state school workers listed in Texas' employee misconduct registry – meaning they had abuse or neglect records that should have made them ineligible for hire. The Dallas Morning News first identified several of these employees in a May article.

Laura Albrecht, a spokeswoman for the department, said all of the unqualified employees the audit revealed have since been terminated – and that the agency is now doing annual reviews of the state "employee misconduct registry."

For advocates of closing the state schools, the auditor's report was an affirmation of what they've been preaching: that Texas officials are lax in state school hiring, and that they aren't making enough effort to move people from institutions into community-based care.

"This report, by our own state auditor, is saying that there are people not being allowed to live in the community, and that people continue to be at risk of abuse," said Jeff Garrison-Tate, a disability rights advocate who heads the nonprofit Community Now.

The agency's investigation of complaints also fell under scrutiny in the auditor's report. Though the agency investigates the overwhelming majority of high priority abuse and neglect incidents within one day, as required by law, they're not as timely with "level two" complaints – those that involve serious injury but don't put the resident in ongoing danger. Over the last two years, 41 percent of level 2 complaints were not investigated within the required two-week time frame.

The agency "should strengthen its processes for investigating complaints and incidents at state schools and public and private community facilities," the report states.

The delay in investigating the level 2 complaints has to do with staffing, Ms. Albrecht said. The agency's employee turnover rate in that area is high but dropping, she said.

"It's a competitive market to get trained and qualified professionals," she said.