Article - March 30, 2008 - San Jose Mercury News

Audit: State's chiropractic board did little for consumers

By Daniel Weintraub

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's pals didn't wreck the state Board of Chiropractic Examiners. The board was a mess long before they arrived.

But a new review from the state auditor demonstrates that two old friends and chiropractors the governor named to the panel that is supposed to oversee the profession were as unclear as Schwarzenegger on the concept of consumer protection.

Franco Columbu, a former Mr. Olympia who starred with Schwarzenegger in the film "Pumping Iron," and Richard Tyler, who picked up Schwarzenegger at the airport when he arrived in the United States as a young immigrant in 1968, have used their jobs on the board to try to steer the state away from what they saw as heavy-handed regulation of their profession.

In the process, the board violated open-meeting laws, ran roughshod over personnel rules, failed to disclose potential conflicts, improperly intervened in disciplinary cases and fumbled serious allegations of wrongdoing by the chiropractors they were supposed to be regulating, according to the audit, which was released Tuesday.

A year ago, after much of this nonsense had already come to light, Schwarzenegger was asked whether he was concerned about what he had heard. His reply: "What is important to us is: Does the chiropractic board represent the chiropractors?"

That it did, governor. And all too well, apparently.

Just one problem: Some people would like the board to represent the public, not the chiropractors.

The latest audit suggests that since Schwarzenegger's revealing comment, the board has begun to clean up its act a bit, at least when it comes to process. But the incompetence detailed in the report remains a stain on the governor's record and an example of how his judgment has been clouded on matters related to his former career as a body builder and the performance of friends he has put in high places.

The auditors reviewed the board's dismissal of its executive officer who was fired without notice at a closed session that was held in violation of state meeting laws and not reported properly after it ended. The employee had irritated board members by, among other things, saying that there was no scientific evidence that chiropractors could cure earaches.

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