Therapists in abuse cases kept practicing
The Maryland board that licenses professional counselors and therapists took up to a year to tell the state attorney general’s office about cases of sexual misconduct and practicing without a license, a state audit released last week found. The delayed notifications allowed the violators to continue seeing patients.
The Board of Professional Counselors and Therapists investigates complaints, but must submit its findings to the attorney general before it can mete out punishment, including revoking or temporarily suspending a professional license, putting a practitioner on probation.
The board told the auditors that its members were not aware of the delays because they did not regularly monitor the cases. It also cited staffing issues and a shortage of digital storage media, such as compact discs, to transfer the complaints to the attorney general.
4 killed in Chicago crash
CHICAGO –– A man and three women died early Sunday when the driver of a fast-moving car lost control and ran head-on into a Chicago Transit Authority bus on the Near West Side, police said.
The collision occurred just before 6 a.m., according to the Chicago Fire Department.
Police said the driver of the car was a 27-year-old man. As he drove west on Madison Street “at a high rate of speed,” police said, he lost control of the car, and it hit a parked car before it slammed into the bus.
The driver and all three female passengers in the car died. The bus driver and three passengers also were taken to hospitals for nonlife-threatening injuries, police said.
Police are investigating whether the cause of the crash was alcohol-related, a police spokesman said.
Trying to prevent crisis
WASHINGTON — Speaker Paul D. Ryan said on Sunday that criticism of the way the House passed its health care bill — no hearings were held on the final version, and it has yet to receive an evaluation from the Congressional Budget Office — was “kind of a bogus attack from the left.”
“This is a rescue mission” as “Obamacare is collapsing,” Mr. Ryan said on ABC’s “This Week.” “This is a crisis. We are trying to prevent this crisis.”
But top senators in his own party said the House’s legislation, which is widely unpopular among voters, would be rewritten and more carefully considered, a process that could take months.
Cutting ‘drug czar’ by 95%
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is proposing to gut the budget of the White House “drug czar” by 95 percent, effectively eliminating the decades-old Office of National Drug Control Policy, the lead federal agency responsible for managing and coordinating drug policy, according to a memo that its acting director sent Friday to agency employees.
The draft budget plan comes as the nation is struggling with an escalating opioid epidemic. Ending opioid addiction was a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and he drew support from many of the rural areas and small working-class towns hit hardest by the drug crisis. In March, President Donald Trump commissioned a new addiction task force to help combat the opioid crisis, tapping his friend and former rival New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) to lead the fight.