Rep. Verla Insko, co-chairman of the state’s legislative oversight committee for mental health, was removed from a tour of Dorothea Dix Hospital last week because the visit had not been approved by top administrators at the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Chapel Hill Democrat said she had gone to Dix at the invitation of Dr. James Wells, a staff psychiatrist who has been an outspoken opponent of plans to close the mental hospital. Wells said he told his supervisor, hospital director Jim Os berg, that Insko was coming only shortly before her arrival Thursday.
