Did you know that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department might be the largest institution in the entire United States engaged in housing and treating the seriously mentally ill?

There are somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 individuals with serious mental illnesses in the department’s custody on any given day.

And there’s a good chance – under current California law – many of them will cycle through the county jail system time and time again.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell knows the circumstances. He also knows that his agency is primarily intended to provide public safety directly for the 4 million people in county areas or cities with contracts for service, and an additional 6 million or more indirectly.

The dysfunction that funnels down from Sacramento and puts the most basic challenges of the mentally ill in the lap of the Sheriff’s Department isn’t generally visible to the public.

There is, however, an increasingly visible symptom of such dysfunction on our streets: homeless folks.

There’s no doubt that mental illness is a chief driver of homelessness. Any intellectually honest observer would likely concede that addressing mental illness comprehensively could be the single most-effective step we could take to remedy homelessness.

Now is an apt time to think this through, since voters countywide and in the city of Los Angeles recently agreed to foot the bill for billions of dollars intended for services and housing for the homeless.

Both pots of money will come with oversight committees, which means there will be a lot of resources in the hands of a lot of constituencies spread over two levels of local government.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that – but McDonnell thinks there might be room for a more strategic view. He envisions a group of concerned individuals distinguished by their achievements in life, and track records of civic concern, intellect, experience and dedication.

It would make sense for such a group to be populated in part by leading lights of our community of business, according to the sheriff. Indeed, he sees the possibility of an effort taking shape as the extension of some existing group with roots in the business community.

We all deal with the fallout of mental illness and the often-associated difficulties of substance abuse and homelessness.

The best chance for an underlying solution might be found in a partnership between government agencies that measure progress by a calendar and business leaders who tend to mark time by a clock – and have a growing sense of urgency on this crucial challenge.