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Governor's office had warning of board's internal chaosDate: 09.03.2007
Posted by: Anabolic Info Team United States
More than a week before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's appointees on the Board of Chiropractic Examiners fired their executive director and took other controversial actions, the director warned the governor's office that the board was out of control and that the disarray would soon become public.
"After being with this Board for over a decade, I have never seen or experienced such malfeasance by a group of Board members," Catherine Hayes wrote to Nicole Rice, an appointments secretary at the governor's office, in an e-mail obtained by The Bee.
"Their lack of knowledge of civil service laws, governmental procedures and the role of the board member makes it impossible for me to carry out my duties as executive director. This type of activity would never be tolerated by a Board within any other governmental oversight agency."
The governor's office concedes that it was aware of the memo, but says that it contained nothing that warranted immediate action.
"There are many boards, and all the memos we receive are taken seriously," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear. "However, this board is constitutionally independent. There was no direct proof of wrongdoing or malfeasance in the memo."
At a meeting nine days after Hayes' e-mail, the board fired her, ejected a deputy attorney general from the meeting, passed a resolution in support of a controversial chiropractic technique involving the use of anesthesia and accredited a college despite staff warnings that it did not have an application on file.
As of that meeting, the board consisted entirely of Schwarzenegger appointees, including two cohorts from his bodybuilding days, Richard Tyler and Franco Columbu.
Tyler, who became chair and interim executive director at the March 1 meeting, picked up Schwarzenegger at the airport when he arrived in California in 1968, and is credited by the governor with helping to launch his career.
Schwarzenegger and Columbu, a two-time Mr. Olympia, trained together for years, and Columbu was the best man in Schwarzenegger's 1986 marriage to Maria Shriver. A governor's spokesman said the two still talk twice a week, but not about the chiropractic board.
After The Bee published a story about the controversy this week, Schwarzenegger responded that the board runs its own affairs without direction from the governor's office.
But Hayes, the former executive director, turned to the governor's office for help in dealing with what she saw as explosive problems developing at the board, whose mission is to safeguard the public against fraud and incompetence in the chiropractic industry.
She e-mailed Rice, a $98,000-a-year deputy appointments secretary to the governor, on Feb. 16 to ask about one of Schwarzenegger's new appointments to the board, Frederick Lerner.
Rice confirmed in an e-mail that Lerner had been appointed. Hayes responded that she only learned about the appointment when one of her secretaries got an e-mail from a friend who works in another state office.
"My past experience with appointments is that I have always been notified prior to the appointment in order to eliminate the element of surprise," Hayes wrote.
Hayes also told Rice that she knew of several individuals who wanted to publicize recent turmoil at the board. A consumer advocacy group and lobbyist for the medical profession requested information about the March 1 meeting, presumably to monitor the growing disarray.
"This is the first time, to my knowledge, either of these groups has made this type of request," she wrote.
Schwarzenegger's handling of the board appointments maximized the influence of his appointees.
According to the 1922 initiative that set up the Board of Chiropractic Examiners, board members may serve for a grace period of one year after their terms end, or until they are replaced. Several members have served through the entire grace period.
The term of board chair Barbara Stanfield, first appointed by former Gov. Gray Davis, ran out this year. But rather than allowing her to continue into the grace period, the governor's office replaced her with Lerner, even though there was another vacancy on the board that Lerner could have filled.
McLear said the governor's office often replaces Davis appointees when it has an opportunity.
In another sign of confusion at the board, the Department of Personnel Administration this week yanked the board's authority to handle personnel matters.
The department took the action because the board's "existing staff does not have the necessary personnel management experience or background to fulfill" the personnel responsibilities, according to a letter dated Tuesday.
The board, like most state operations, won the authority to handle many personnel matters in 2005. This is the first time that a state board or department had all its personnel powers stripped, said Debbie Endsley, spokeswoman for the Department of Personnel Administration.
Endsley said she could not elaborate on why the board lost its personnel authority because it would violate the attorney-client confidentiality between the two offices.
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