The situation that revealed conflicts of interest allowed to run rampant in the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office of Professional Regulation (OPR)—the same situation that led to my launching this blog last November—has finally run its course. It has concluded all too predictably, and thereby also all too sadly, for what it says about the limits of the good intentions of those who hold power.

Background, for those who want the details: the early history of this situation is in the following posts. Follow the links embedded in each to get to source documents:

• About
  
• It Starts
  
• The Disney Attraction that Thinks It’s a State
• What Do Due Process and Swiss Cheese Have in Common?
• “Troublesome” due process issues noted in appeal decision
• Boilerplate bureaucratic abuse
  
• One More Similarity
  
• Today? Maybe?
  
• Not Yet–and Another Chapter

If you want only the most recent installment leading to this post, see Not Quite SOP at OPR: Update from Vermont Secretary of State’s Office.

If you want to skip the links altogether, here’s the thumbnail summary. Vermont’s Secretary of State, Deborah Markowitz, puts herself forward as, and generally has the reputation of, a liberal to progressive, idealistic Democrat who is committed to open, responsible, accountable government. Yet as documented in the source materials linked to the above posts, her Office of Professional Regulation is anything but open, responsible, and least of all, accountable.

The first part of this situation was my having been wrapped up in the OPR bureaucracy for several years, in a Kafkaesque meat grinder of a process that did in my psychology practice and put me into bankruptcy and foreclosure. During that process the shots were being called by a former chair of the Board of Psychological Examiners, Mary Willmuth, who was possessed of at least one clear conflict of interest, with two or more other strong possibilities present in the circumstances. To be sure, I appealed the Board’s original decision against me, in which, among other things, they convicted me of ten things with which I had never even been charged. The only hope I had of salvaging my credibility was by going through the appeal process—and that expense is what did me in financially, severely enough that I have yet to recover from it. (And here I will ask you to please notice the “Donate” box on the right side of this page.)

All the charges of malpractice against me had to do only with clinical notes.  There was never any allegation that I had caused anyone any harm.  All the charges of malpractice were reversed on appeal.

But I should never have had to go that far. There should have been a way to stop something as egregious as the OPR actions were from the beginning. There should have been someone, some office somewhere, to tell Markowitz and the OPR, “Back up. The state must play by the rules.” But there was no such someone. Once the process against me had been started, I had no way to stop it, no matter how outlandish were the OPR’s actions.

The second part of this situation was my filing an unprofessional conduct complaint against Willmuth. No, I was not so naive as to think there would actually ever be a decision acknowledging her unprofessional conduct, though there are several articles in the professional code of ethics, which has been adopted into Vermont law, that speak to her actions. I filed the complaint against her because it was important to document as thoroughly as possible how the system really works, driven by crony-ism and conflicts of interest, despite even Markowitz’s assertions of idealistic commitment to open and accountable government.

There were a couple of moments when it appeared that the people at OPR were at least trying to act according to principles of responsible government. The first was in April, 2006, when the new director of OPR, Christopher Winters, wrote me a letter saying that no investigator or unit administrator who had been involved in any prior case involving me would be assigned to work on the complaint against Willmuth. The second time was this past January, 2008, when I heard from Ed Adrian, the lawyer who was working on the team investigating the Willmuth complaint, that the Board of Psychological Examiners had rejected the initial recommendation of the Investigative Team (IT) to dismiss the complaint (see this post).

The last documents from the state on the matter arrived a couple of weeks ago. They were a letter from the unit administrator who had violated OPR regulations in the case against me, and the report that concluded the complaint should be dismissed.

Now, who would like to guess who at OPR signed off on the dismissal?

Could it possibly have been the OPR lawyer who defended OPR’s due-process-violating conviction of me? The same OPR lawyer handling the appeal for the state—the appeal which reversed all findings of malpractice against me? Could the OPR powers that be have really been that benighted, or arrogant, as to let that very same lawyer, possessed of such an obvious conflict of interest, sign off on the dismissal?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

The OPR lawyer who signed off on the dismissal of the complaint against Willmuth is the same OPR lawyer who tried to make sure that the OPR’s egregious convictions of me stuck: Robert Backus.

Ah, but Christopher Winters never said there wouldn’t be a lawyer appointed to the Willmuth case who had not been involved in the case against me!

And I do wonder how Robert Backus came to take over the case that Ed Adrian had shepherded for two years or so.

And it’s not just Backus‘ signature on the dismissal. It’s also some truly absurd things he wrote in his rationale of the dismissal. I’ll save that post for another day, however.

So there you have it. Given this outcome, there are two possible conclusions, from where I sit. One is that Markowitz never meant a word of what she’s said and written about a commitment to open, responsible, and accountable government, that it’s only been the kind of jabber to get one elected to then wield power however irresponsibly one wants to, given there are no mechanisms in place to prevent it. The other is that Markowitz has meant every word she’s ever said or written about open, responsible, accountable government, and that not even she who is currently serving her fifth term in office can prevent her own staff from acting irresponsibly and abusing power when there are no mechanisms to hold them accountable.

I will assume the latter, which of course also assumes that Secretary Markowitz would agree that there have been conflicts of interest at work in her OPR. If that is the case, then I invite her to join me in calling for the creation of a State Ombudsman Office in Vermont.

What other avenue to open, responsible, and accountable government is there when not even the best in state government can pull it off in their own offices, absent some external mechanism of accountability?

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

P.S. While Markowitz bears primary responsibility here, I’m not forgetting that professional board members are appointed by the governor. That’s a process that also bears scrutiny.