Harking back to odum’s thoughtful analysis last month of H304, I think it would be a good thing for as many of us as possible to show up for the “Lobby Day” for H304 this Thursday.  Folks are to meet in the Pavilion Auditorium at 10:30, and teams of people will then lobby their legislators at the State House, ending with a meeting with key committee folks from 12:15 until 1:00 p.m.  Not that I expect there are too many shy people at GMD, but know that shy people are welcome and important too–they won’t have to talk, but numbers of people showing up is significant.

H304, to refresh your memory, is a bill to establish universal hospital care for Vermonters. Their website is http://www.SaveVermontHealthCa… (Note they’ve dropped “Take Back Vermont Health Care,” though I admit I rather enjoyed the boomerang effect of that phrasing.)  Also go back and read odum’s piece, http://www.greenmountaindaily….

Whatever your opinion is of H304 as it stands, keeping dialogue going about healthcare reform in Vermont is important.  The organizers of Thursday’s event are of course looking especially for people who support H304 outright, but based on earlier conversation with Deb Richter I’m sure they would welcome those who favor keeping the dialogue open as well. What happens on Thursday will have an effect on how whether opponents to the bill are able to shut down dialogue altogether.  The law of inertia is now on the side of keeping things moving.  If they should come to a standstill, inertia will work against any new dialogue getting started again in the near future.

In any case, and as ever, please contact your own legislators to let them know where you stand on the matter.

I have been writing lately at bureaucracyblog.com about my experience over the last several years with the Office of Professional Regulation (OPR) in the Secretary of State’s Office (SoS). To summarize a complicated story in terms that most people in the U.S. would understand right now, my experience with OPR is very similar to what the fired U.S. Attorneys experienced with DOJ. It’s been a case rife with conflicts of interest, about which I’ve been a thorn in their sides for years with no one in authority paying much attention–until, perhaps, now.

I had lately been awaiting the decision as to whether the Karl Rove counterpart in my case would face formal charges and finally have to pay the piper.  That decision, like everything else with OPR/SoS these past many years, was delayed.  I finally received an update from the Office of Professional Regulation (OPR) in the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office (SoS)a couple of days ago.

It turns out that they had sent me two emails prior, but emails from addresses that once arrived without a hitch were apparently getting caught by my spam filter. I appreciate the initiative by Ed Adrian to call me to get an alternate email address and let me know of the problem. He and the OPR director, Christopher Winters, have confirmed that in the future they will send me hard copy updates, in addition to email, to make sure I get them.

The upshot of the update: standard operating procedure (SOP) at OPR has been sidelined in the case. I do not yet know whom I have to thank, but it appears someone at SoS/OPR has been listening. Here’s what I know:

Regarding the former chair of the Board of Psychological Examiners who acted as both prosecutor and “independent” expert witness, offered under oath an analysis based on a non-existent statute, and other similar unethical actions (cited in a formal appeal decision–see bureaucracyblog.com posts for links to documents), the OPR team that investigated the complaint against her went to the Board on January 11 to recommend dismissal of that complaint. Someone, most likely with considerable authority in OPR (and less likely but remotely possible, someone on the Board), seems to have brought some official pressure to bear on the Board.

The outcome, very different from SOP, was that the Board rejected the recommendation of dismissal and sent the matter back to the investigative team for further review to be presented to the Board again in another month or two. They will be getting a different psychologist, totally new to the case, to undertake the review and recommend for prosecution or dismissal.

That is as much as I know. Here is what all that suggests to me:

OPR investigative teams (ITs) are made up of a professional from the Board, an investigator, a unit administrator, and an attorney for the state. In order for any case to go forward to prosecution, both the lawyer and the professional on the IT have to agree that it’s warranted.  If one or the other disagree, the recommendation is to dismiss.  Since, in the case in question, the IT’s recommendation was to dismiss; and it was rejected by the Board and the matter remanded to the IT; and the IT is now to have a new psychologist assigned to it; all those things taken together suggest that the psychologist who has been assigned to the case for the past 21 months (and was presumably a factor in why the case lay dormant for 18 months) is likely possessed of a conflict of interest.

I could rail–and at some future date, in some private place, may well–about how OPR should have made sure from the outset that whatever psychologist they appointed to the IT was unfettered. But I’d rather attend to what’s happening now, or at least what is appearing to be happening now; and that is that someone or ones in OPR/SoS now seem to be policing the actions of those who act under their authority. That is a good thing.

The story continues and the ultimate outcome is still uncertain, but this is a welcome, and I think important, intermediate outcome. Granted that I could be entirely wrong about what seems to be happening. But if what is happening is truly that people in power are attending to preventing the unethical exercise of that power, that is a very good thing.

All of this still argues for the creation of a State Ombudsman in Vermont, and I hope soon to post an update about that effort.