Recently, the Sacramento Bee ran some news stories about some very unusual goings-on with the State Board of Chiropractic Examiners. The stuff they were publishing was so outrageous that I thought I would do a little bit of nosing around myself. My take is that there was a ‘real story’ here, one that didn’t get told by the Bee’s version of what happened…
All of the hubbub has come about because of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s efforts to clean up years of abuse by the Board of Chiropractic Examiners (BCE) under the Davis Administration
Three people controlled the BCE since Davis took office in 1998. They seemed to enjoy unmanaged control of who was appointed to the BCE and had their way with enormous regulatory powers. Despite growing opposition from consumer and professional associations, scandals continued to plague the BCE until two weeks ago. With a Board filled with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appointees, the BCE terminated Executive Director Catherine Hayes, and showed a lack of confidence with her ally and friend Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Jana Tuton by asking her leave the room for an Executive Session. Minutes later, Judge James Duvaras, a BCE public member, personally served ousted Ms. Hayes with a termination notice with state troopers on hand.
Over 50 people attending the meeting witnessed this amazing experience. But the defrocked Hayes would not go quietly.
The ousted Executive Director seemingly reached out to reporters from the Sacramento Bee. The Bee, going half cocked and believing every word of the disgraced DAG Tuton and unhappy ex-employee Hayes, printed amazing headlines such as “Chaos on the Chiropractic Board”. To be fair, the Board Members decided they would not answer press calls and let the Governor’s press office field inquiries. So important was this story for the Bee that it ran across the "top of the fold" on the next day’s front page, eclipsing all other coverage, including that of the war. As it turns out, the only one facing the ‘chaos’ mentioned in the Bee headline was the discharged employee herself.
Among those who were quoted by the Bee was recently released Board Member Barbara Stansfield, a Davis appointee. She vented anger about the ‘house cleaning’ operation and blamed two Board members — Franco Columbu and Richard Tyler — the former being Schwarzenegger’s close friend and the latter being the first person in America to meet Schwarzenegger in 1978 when he arrived at Los Angeles International Airport. With the addition of two close allies of Governor Schwarzenegger to the BCE, it became obvious big changes were in store for the BCE staff
Observers began to note that the Davis-appointed Board was engaged in furious infighting before Arnold took over. One time BCE Chairman Ronald Hayes (no relation to the discharged former Executive Director) was appointed by Davis ("coincidentally" Hayes’ wife was a fundraiser for the former Governor). In no time, Ronald Hayes distinguished himself by publicly and rudely berating a colleague (we’ll spare you the actual, inappropriate language). Soon thereafter, Kim Smith, then the Board’s Executive Director resigned and sued Chairman Hayes for sexual misconduct. The Schwarzenegger Administration knew that radical surgery was necessary.
The last Davis ‘hack’ who has not yet been fired is Dr. Maggie Craw. She’s a real piece of work. I’ve been told that has never treated a patient since her graduation from chiropractic school in 1978. She is a member of a fringe group called the National Association of Chiropractic Medicine. According to its website, this group espouses the belief that chiropractors should, “renounce the chiropractic hypothesis and/or philosophy; that is, the tenets upon which their scope of practice is based.” Maybe so, but hardly a mainstream chiropractic view. Worse yet, Craw is the chief enforcement officer for the BCE. In other words she is the top cop and prosecutor of chiropractors who do not meet her approval. The icing on the cake? I’ve been told that Craw is an employee of the multi-billion-dollar State Compensation Insurance Fund. Apparently, while working for the SCIF she judges chiropractors when they submit bills. Fair enough. But, when she sits as the BCE’s chief cop, she can easily bring charges against any chiropractor, including those with whom she may disfavor from interactions in her ‘day’ job. A first year law student (or a conservative web-site publisher) can easily recognize the obvious conflicts of interest here.
It appears that the new Board is very interested in asking Craw about her conflict of interests. But that might be difficult. Craw apparently has taken a leave of absence (for ‘health reasons’) from the BCE, but is seemingly still well enough to report for work at the SCIF. That sounds very suspicious, doesn’t it?
The Sacramento Bee, perhaps in their haste to drive the coverage of the Iraq War off of their front page, published several errors such as stating that critic “Paul Bishop, a 34-year employee of the state attorney general” accused the Governor of incompetence. But I have been assured that Bishop is not an employee of the Attorney General, and that he is apparently on a medical leave of absence from his position as a part time consultant for the BCE. He is a mouthpiece for the Catherine Hayes, as an old friend and ally of the two Davis hacks removed by the Board. Perhaps a more egregious misstatement by the Bee was their assertion that the new Board wanted to “replace” the Deputy Attorney General in her job by our own FlashReport contributor, Shawn Steel! When I asked Steel about this, he said the Board never approached him for employment, and if they did he would never accept any offer. So much the Bee’s sources on this story…
I suspect that, in retrospect, the editors over at the Sacramento Bee are going to have to give a hard look at how their paper ended up with such skewed reporting on this whole matter.
The real story here is a Chiropractic Board that, under Davis, was filled with people that, collectively, were supremely dysfunctional. The Governor did his job and made substantive changes in the makeup of the BCE. Naturally, there will always be disgruntled employees. That’s another good reason that power-hungry government bureaucrats should also be subject to term-limits.