THE CONTENTIOUS battle over Fernald's future goes on.
It takes someone like Julie Peck to make the case that closing the Waltham center for the severely mentally disabled isn't the end of the world. It's a way into the world.
Peck's 23-year old grandson, Matthew, qualifies for institutional care. He functions at the level of a 3-month-old child. All he can do voluntarily is move his head. He needs a roomful of machines and around-the-clock nursing care to keep him alive. He lived with Peck since infancy. But a year ago, when arthritis and other physical issues made it more difficult for the now 71-year-old Peck to continue caring for him, she opted to move him to a group home in Belchertown.
"Despite his limiting conditions, he is not stuck in his home. He goes to a unique day program almost every day, goes shopping with his buddies, goes to community events, and gets more hugs and kisses than most guys," Peck told lawmakers during a hearing last week in Gardner Auditorium.
This is a fight over money, one that pits parent against parent and the 858 residents of six state institutions against 33,000 people already integrated into the community. Those who already live in non-institutional settings face dramatic budget cutbacks that will greatly reduce services.
Beyond money, it's also a fight over society's expectations for fellow citizens with severe mental disabilities.
Is their best possible life available only behind an institution's walls? Or is "an equal life or better" - the legal standard - achievable beyond them?
Massachusetts plans to shut down the Fernald Developmental Center and three other state-run facilities beginning in 2010.
Under the plan backed by Governor Deval Patrick, the Wrentham Developmental Center would remain open. But most residents of state-run facilities would transfer out of them. The closures would save some $42 million over the next four years, according to estimates from the state Department of Mental Retardation. But Patrick administration officials insist this is more than economic policy; it's policy aimed at creating the best quality of life. It would put the Bay State in step with national trends and is supported by the courts. The US Supreme Court recently declined to hear an appeal to keep Fernald open.
In a last-ditch effort to block the shutdown, the House of Representatives passed a budget amendment that calls for the state to study the cost and quality of care it provides Fernald's residents. The Patrick administration is trying to discourage the Senate from adopting a similar amendment.
Advocates who back the closures believe state money is better invested in staffing and programs than in bricks and mortar.
But parents and guardians with loved ones living in these institutions are fighting hard to keep them open. They insist their needs cannot be met in non-institutional settings and cast it as a moral struggle to protect the most vulnerable at any cost.
Several lawmakers on the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities clearly support their cause. "Ten years from now, we will be saying this is a tragedy," warned state Representative Martin J. Walsh of Dorchester.
One of Walsh's weaker arguments for keeping places like Fernald open is local resistance to halfway houses. That suggests that society's discomfort with the mentally disabled is a good reason to sequester them.
That sentiment conflicts with Peck's view of what her grandson's life can and should be.
She doesn't look at him and see a hopeless soul, incapable of love, affection, and interaction with other human beings. She sees a young man who can, with appropriate care, experience life despite great physical and mental limitations.
As Peck told lawmakers, "Even the most medically complex and intellectually limited men and women can thrive in community settings and can have a richer life as a result."
Anyone listening to Peck has to wonder whether the tragedy might be letting the fear of doing the wrong thing for one group of vulnerable citizens stop Massachusetts from doing the right thing for all vulnerable citizens.
Joan Vennochi can be reached at vennochi@globe.com. 
