Bill inspired by Va. Tech slayings OK'd

State lawmakers on Tuesday unanimously approved a bill intended to eliminate gaps in the mental health system that a disturbed Virginia Tech student slipped through before killing 32 people.

The bill tightens criteria for identifying, detaining and ordering treatment for mentally ill people who are a threat to themselves and others. It streamlines the ability of mental health care providers to inform law enforcement, school officials and families, when necessary, to care for people in an unstable mental condition.

The legislation is headed to Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine.

"I applaud the Legislature — both houses, both parties — taking these very important mental health reforms and funding issues seriously, and I'm happy with what I understand the progress to be," Kaine said.

The bill is the centerpiece of the legislation to emerge from last year's Virginia Tech massacre.

A court had ordered outpatient psychiatric treatment for student Seung Hui Cho, but he was able to legally purchase two handguns before killing 32 people and committing suicide April 16.

"In regard to outpatient treatment, our overarching concern was to make sure no one falls through the cracks like Mr. Cho," said Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle.

The bill had bipartisan support among the Republican-controlled House of Delegates and the Democratic Senate. Families of the Virginia Tech victims and advocates for mental health services testified for the measure — often emotionally — at somber public hearings.

Bell, in the day's most poignant moment, directed comments in his floor speech to relatives of those who died at the Blacksburg campus.

"We heard from them, ... and those people said, `Please don't let our loved ones have died in vain. I'd like to emphasize that they did not," Bell said.

When the bill won final passage on a 99-0 vote in the House, the entire chamber cheered and applauded.

The only remaining legislative business tied to the Virginia Tech shootings is a $42 million boost in the new state budget for community-based mental health treatment.

The funding is not in dispute as negotiators from the House and Senate work to resolve differences in their versions of the $78 billion, two-year spending plan by Saturday's scheduled adjournment.

Another policy change the shootings inspired was to close a loophole that allowed Cho to legally purchase guns.

In Virginia, only the names of people who were committed to mental hospitals were put into a federal database of those prohibited from buying guns. Kaine signed an executive order last spring to include people ordered into outpatient treatment; it was written into state law this year.

Legislation Kaine backed to prevent felons and those judged mentally ill from buying weapons at gun shows failed. The GOP-dominated House rejected legislation to compel private gun sellers to conduct the same background checks on buyers that federally licensed dealers do.