The METO Settlement

Shamus O'Meara: The settlement agreement also requires a vetting and recommended changes to the… a rule—they call it Rule 40—in state government that has all sorts of different protections and protocols for people with developmental disabilities. Some of those are outdated. Some of them have been used inconsistently. Some of them were at issue in the METO case.

The state, the settlement class, the individual that were sued, all agreed that it's an appropriate time to address Rule 40 to ensure that it is tracking with current guidelines for the care and treatment of people with developmental disabilities, that it's consistent with the protections that are afforded them, and that it's not being construed and utilized in an outdated manner.

And so that Rule 40 Committee is a pretty big component of what's taking place here, because it will help set up a structure under which these positive changes that we are agreeing on can be made, and we can protect people in the right manner, and we can protect them in a group homes, we can protect them in state-operated facilities, and these people can… the people with developmental disabilities and their families can have the knowledge that those protections are actually living and breathing, and they can rely on them.