There's a passage in the Dickens novel "Oliver Twist" where a character named Mr. Bumble is informed he is legally responsible for his wife's actions:

" 'If the law supposes that,' said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, 'the law is a ass -- a idiot.' "

The passage leaped to mind Sunday as I read a piece in The Bee by my colleague Jim Sanders.

The story was about a 55-year-old guy from Galt named Honorato Rodriguez, who had the tragic misfortune to contract Parkinson's disease and go crazy. In 2002, he threw a Molotov cocktail into a neighbor's backyard, and a judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity. Rodriguez was ordered into a state mental hospital until he is no longer insane, which is not expected to be any time soon.

Here's where the story goes from tragic to outrageous. Under a 1967 state law, Rodriguez's wife and children are financially responsible for paying the $166,000 a year it costs to keep Rodriguez locked up at Napa State Hospital. As of May 2006, the bill was already up to $335,000.

Think about that. As taxpayers, we foot the bill for miscreants like Charlie Manson, because keeping dangerous people locked up is part of the price of an orderly society.

And yet state law also demands that Gloria Rodriguez and her two grown children foot the bill themselves to keep their husband and father locked up for the same reason.

The law is indeed "a ass."

The Department of Mental Health people say that under this statute, the state collected $3.3 million from 230 patients or their families last year. But it's unclear how many of those have relatives who were committed through criminal prosecution. The current DMH director, Dr. Steve Mayberg, told me this is the first case of its kind he's encountered since taking over in 1993.

It's also unclear how or why Section 7275 of the state Welfare and Institutions Code came to be. It was enacted when then-Gov. Ronald Reagan's administration was cutting spending on the state's mental health system. So maybe it was designed simply to help defray costs.

It was also when it was still fairly simple to commit Grandma if she started talking to furniture and the family couldn't afford to take care of her anymore. So maybe it was designed to discourage the practice of dumping relatives on the state.

The code does allow the DMH director to "reduce, cancel or remit" the bill if there is "satisfactory proof" that the patient or his relatives are too poor to pay. Mayberg says there is no intention to garnish anyone's wages or seize the Rodriguez house.

In the meantime, the Rodriguezes have filed a lawsuit, and DMH has made a settlement offer that would put a lien on half of the modest house owned jointly by the Rodriguezes. That means the state would get half of any sale or estate settlement when Mrs. Rodriguez dies. And the two Rodriguez kids would still be on the hook for their dad's bills if he should outlive their mom.

What is clearly needed in this case is to change a crummy 40-year-old law. And it ought to move through the Legislature in a timely fashion.

It's amazing how swiftly legislators can move when motivated. For example, they fell all over themselves in January to pass a bill paving the way for money collected for families of five dead firefighters to be distributed.

In the meantime, maybe in lieu of sending her to jail, a judge could order Paris Hilton -- whose chief purpose in life seems to be to contribute to global warming by breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide -- to pay the bills for Honorato Rodriguez for a while.

Of course, that's probably against the law. And we've already established what the law can be.