Bruce Johnson (Part 1)

Headed an Interagency Task Force on State Hospital Closings

(Run time 1:18)

At the Governor's (Carlson) request, I left that job after about a year and took over an interagency planning group and negotiated essentially the closure of Moose Lake, Faribault, and Cambridge Regional Treatment Centers and that was very directly involved with the whole deinstitutionalization.

And then later, a couple of jobs later, I actually ended up Commissioner of Children, Families, and Learning and, of course, involved with special education.

I consider myself very, very fortunate I mean a… in the sense that I was able to play a role in this. Timing is everything. I like to think I was a catalyst. I hope I was, to kind of the momentum to finish the job off. It took a little longer that we anticipated back in 1993. It took well another seven years to get it done. I feel good about that. I hope that I also maybe regarded as a catalyst in terms of coordination of services.