When I was told that I would be informed “soon after” last Friday’s meeting of the state’s decision in my main OPR case of interest, “soon after” apparently meant something longer than a week. Ah, the wiggle room of bureaucratese!

While the wait continues, I thought I’d touch on another chapter of the Secretary of State’s bureaucracy-run-amok that took place a few years ago.

To recap briefly: a previously dismissed case was re-opened against me with no new evidence in August 2001. After a protracted and Kafkaesque non-investigation and bizarre hearing, in 2003 I was convicted of equally Kafkaesque and bizarre things, including ten things with which I had never been charged. I appealed and got all those uncharged counts of malpractice reversed in the fall of 2004. Now for the next chapter: in the 2005 legislative session, the then-director of the Office of Professional Regulation, Jessica Porter, proposed legislation that would eliminate the level of administrative appeal at which I had won. (See this Times Argus story.)

The bill made it through the House Government Operations Committee before I found out about it, but it still had to make its way through the Senate Gov Ops Committee. State Senator Bill Doyle was helpful in arranging for me to have the opportunity to speak to the committee about the bill and why they should not eliminate the administrative appeal level, which would force those who wanted to appeal an OPR decision to resort directly to Superior Court. First, however, Gov Ops would hear from Jessica Porter.

Early during her testimony to the committee in March, Sen. Doyle asked her if there had ever been a case in which a member of a professional board was possessed of a conflict of interest when it came to hearing a complaint before the board. She testified there had never been such a case, but if there were, she would take steps to see that the case was fairly dealt with. (All of these sessions were taped, and are kept in the committee’s archives.)

That bit of testimony from her was an outright lie, but it was May before I got my turn to address the committee. I reminded them of Porter’s testimony in March, then handed to them copies of the letter that had been sent to Porter and Secretary Markowitz in 2002 from my attorney, which expressed in the clearest of terms that conflicts of interest were driving the case against me, and requesting remediation. There was, of course, no action by either of them.

As if I needed any more help convincing the committee to deny Porter’s request to eliminate administrative appeal, Porter accommodated at the next round of testimony some days later by passing out to the committee copies of the original Board decision against me–the one that had been reversed!!! It was a desperate attempt to present something that might have a chance of undermining my credibility. The members of the gov ops committee, being not quite the ignorant, gullible hayseeds Porter seemed to think they were, didn’t fall for it.

In the end, they retained administrative appeal for OPR decisions.

So there’s another example of the value of fighting the bureaucratic powers-that-be. Patience and persistence usually win out, eventually, over arrogant swaggering.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen