Part 1:Mental-health changes in North Carolina were intended to improve community treatment and give taxpayers good value, but they have done neither. Providers took clients shopping, swimming and to movies for $61 an hour. And the cost of the community support program was more than 10 times what the state expected.

Part 2:Community support is lucrative for providers, but reviews say many clients don't need the mental-health service. Now the state wants its money back.

Part 3:North Carolina's 2001 mental-health reforms aimed to make its mental hospitals places of last resort and to have as many people as possible seek treatment near their homes. But now people with severe needs are left without care.

Part 4:Charges are filed in just 13 percent of cases. The lowest-paid, least-trained workers spend the most time with patients.

Part 5:Since December 2000, at least 82 patients in the state's mental institutions have died in ways that raise questions, including homicides and suicides.

Q:In 2001, state legislators and Gov. Mike Easley's administration set out to reform the public mental health system with a sledgehammer.

Under the Dome:A legislative office created to examine the benefit of public programs was ready to give its report last week on the state's mental health services.

Members of a panel formed by Gov. Mike Easley appear headed toward approval of a plan that would require training on the public records law for most state employees and improvements to government e-mail servers that would archive messages for a number of years.

Charlotte City Attorney Mac McCarley said Thursday that public information requests for e-mail had become so burdensome that top officials had quit sending sensitive messages for fear they might become public.

The findings on why a Franklin County hospital was denied state permission to move from the center of the county to a location near the Wake County line will be released today.

About 20 state mental health workers gather at Dix to protest what they say are unsafe conditions in the state's psychiatric hospitals.

A respected legal scholar said Friday that the Easley administration's policy of allowing workers to delete e-mail messages when their "reference value" ends is lawful.