This issue will bear watching: Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle, R-Virginia Beach has scolded the chief justice of the Virginia Supreme Court for overstepping his authority in seeking to reform the state’s mental-health laws. Covering a Senate subcommittee hearing yesterday, Bill McElway with the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

Stolle wondered aloud if the Supreme Court has become an activist body. He warned Lucyk that the high court’s role is one of administering the courts and deciding the law, not legislative priorities and spending recommendations.

“The more you talk, the more concerned I become,” Stolle said when Lucyk gently tried to rebuff any suggestion that the mental-health-reform commission intends to overstep the legislature’s role.

The unusual flare-up came just days after Chief Justice Leroy R. Hassell Sr. told several dozen people involved in mental-health issues to work over the coming year to revamp mental-health laws in Virginia. …

Stolle, chairman of the Senate Courts of Justice Committee, said, “I don’t think it’s appropriate if judges don’t like what we are doing with mental health, to tell us how we should deal with mental health. “I think they ought to inform us on how mental-health issues impact the courts. And not to tell us how to do our job.”

Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax, defended the chief justice. Virginia is in a crisis, she said. Overcrowded jails have become warehouses for the mentally ill, state funds are lacking to properly care for them, and cases are spilling into the courts. If the reform effort comes down to money, Stolle responded, that is the bailiwick of the legislature, not the courts.

For once I find myself agreeing with Stolle. If state mental health policies break the law, the state Supreme Court should say so. But it’s up to the Governor and the General Assembly, not the judges, to figure out how to fix them.