The Can of Worms Counseling Center

The Loco Fred Astaire Can of Worms Logo

The phrase “a can of worms” has not been around very long so its meaning is still evolving. I will use the phrase in this and a subsequent series of River Vices posts on the Scioto County Counseling Center (SCCC) in the sense of “creating a host of potential problems.”  There are so many problems at SCCC, or so many worms in the can, that it’s hard to know where to begin, but it would be useful to know, at the outset, who the officers in the somewhat shadowy company are. According to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service form 990, which can be seen on Guidestar, an  information service that keeps tabs on American non-profit companies, there were  four officers in the fiscal year 2012-2013: Thurman Edward Hughes, Andrew B. Albrecht, Lora Gampp, and Kevin L. Blevins.

Officers at SCCC as of 2012-2013

Title    Name                           Compensation

CEO     Edward Hughes              $140,134

CEO    Andrew Albrecht             $80,674

CFO    Lora Gampp                     $83,327

COO   Kevin Blevins                   $78,007

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is the principal decision-making person in an organization. In the case of the SCCC there appears to be one too many CEOs.  I don’t understand how there can be two CEO’s in one company, but the form 990 filed with the IRS by the SCCC names both Hughes and Albrecht as CEOs. In a report in the Portsmouth Daily Times (24 July 2013), Albrecht is referred to as the Executive Director of the Counseling Center. But only  Albrecht’s  name is listed  in the person-to-contact box of IRS form 990 (above), suggesting he is in charge of day-to-day operations. Possibly Hughes, in his big house high on a hill in Sciotovlle, is in semi-retirement, but still collecting full salary. In the calendar year 2012, form 990 informs us, there were 217 SCCC employees, whose  salaries amounted collectively to about $6,000,000, which was about 60% of the roughly $10,000,000 in revenue SCCC took in that year. Where does all that revenue come from?

SCCC has what could be described as a  captive clientele, since many of them begin drug rehabilitation treatment under a court order. That captive clientele  could also be called lucrative since Uncle Sam, with deep pockets, directly and indirectly, pays most of the cost of their  treatment.

That Albrecht  would oversee so big an operation is surprising  since he does not appear to have the educational qualifications for a CEO. Anyone in  field of addiction counseling, which has mushroomed in the last quarter century,  must swim in a sea of anagrams. The anagrams that follow Hughes' name are MPS and LICDC, presumably for Master of Professional Studies and Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor. Hughes co-authored a book titled Baffled by Addiction (2009). I will admit to being somewhat baffled by the acronyms in the field of addiction counseling. If Albrecht has anagrams after his name, it is a well-kept secret. His educational background was not mention in the PDT story that reported his promotion to Executive Director, but neither was his police record reported in that same story. His rap sheet stretches  as far back as 1996, when he was not yet out of his teens. (If he had broken  the law in his early  teens, that is no longer part of the public record.) The anagrams associated with his police record, such as  DUI and DUS, are a matter of  public record, and reveal that in addition to driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs (DUI) and with his license suspended (DUS), that he was also arrested for underage drinking; for failing to yield; for driving the wrong way on a one way street; for speeding (more than once); for illegally parking on a public highway; for not wearing a seatbelt;  for possessing drug paraphernalia; for drug use (more than once); for assault; for disturbing the peace; for disorderly conduct; and for receiving stolen property. If 1996 was his earliest run-in with the police, 2013, when he was clocked doing 70 in a 55 mph zone, was his latest. It was just months after that ticket for speeding that he was promoted to C.E.O./E.D. at SCCC. During the years most bright, ambitious young men his age would have been pursuing an undergraduate and graduate degree in some professional field, Albrecht, judging by his police record (below), was into drugs, speeding, and screwing off. But since these acronyms in the field of addiction counseling can be earned at least in part online,  perhaps he too has more than one anagram. 

 

If abusing drugs and driving recklessly appear to be  requirements for holding public office in Portsmouth, as in the case of the failed grocery clerk, Jim Kalb, why shouldn’t those same lawless activities qualify someone to be the CEO of a Portsmouth company like the SCCC? It is true that Albrecht has not yet  failed in business and declared himself bankrupt, which appears to be another requirement for holding public office in Portsmouth, but he is still in his thirties. He has time. Who knows, if he is crooked and incompetent enough, he too may end up, like those  lugubrious failures Kalb, Bauer, Malone, Haas, Saddler, and Kevin W. Johnson, slithering in the can of worms  of  Portsmouth politics. 

The Houses of Hughes and Vernier

Vernier's $425,000 house and 2.5 acres on a hill in West Portsmouth

Who’s the more remote caregiver?

Hughes prefers a house on a hill with a view.

Vernier prefers a hill near the river.

Hughes owns one big house, Vernier two.

Like teetotalers selling booze to souses,

Or the Wolf pimping for Red Riding Hood,

They profit from putting halfway drug houses 

In somebody else’s neighborhood.

Hughes' big house on a hill in Sciotoville

Some call Vernier a crook, he says he ain’t.

He christened his real estate company Blessed.

His addicted  “clients” consider him a saint,

But he’s less Joan of Arc and more Mae West.

They say Hughes is worth multi-million,

That he’s got the coroner in his corner.

He's sort of like a hooker at a cotillion

Snatching the plum from Jack Horner.

The plum's the Counseling Center

With its front-end—Compass Point Housing—

And its rear-end, like a centaur,

Badly in need of delousing.

A centaur badly in need of delousing

                                                                                                                                                         

Relevant Links (click below)

http://oh-scioto-auditor.publicaccessnow.com/PropertyInfo.aspx?mpropertynumber=15-1951.000&mtab=property&p=15-1951.000

http://oh-scioto-auditor.publicaccessnow.com/PropertyInfo.aspx?mpropertynumber=34-1856.000&mtab=property&p=34-1856.000

The Multiple Chance Drug House

"Beware of snake-oil salesmen peddling miracle cures."

In a flyer distributed for the 20th anniversary of the Marsh House, Counseling Center, Inc.'s,  founder Ed Hughes wondered what the late Jim Marsh, after whom the halfway house is named,  would have said about the 20-year-anniversary and celebration. "I think he [Jim Marsh] would find it just perfect," Hughes wrote. Just perfect? The sign in front of the facility advertises "miracles." From what I have learned about Ed Hughes, I would say Counseling Center, Inc., and its Compass Point affiliate, rather than being perfect, are perfectly awful. As Mark Twain might have said, "Beware  of snake-oil salesmen peddling miracle cures." I believe the Counseling Center, Inc./Compass Point  is a curse and is one of the reasons Portsmouth has a reputation, backed up by statistics, of being among the most drug-ridden cities in Ohio. Counseling  Center, Inc., is a business, not a humanitarian operation, and the more addiction there is in Portsmouth the more prosperous Hughes' business becomes. Counseling Center, Inc., has attracted drug addicts from other  Ohio counties and from other states as well for a decade because Hughes knows how to get the government and the tax-payers  to pay for housing and feeding and transporting his "clients," as he calls his drug-addicted customers.

Business is so good that Counseling Center, Inc./Compass Point Housing keeps on expanding  in Portsmouth and beyond, buying residential houses and converting them into half-way houses, which lowers property values in the neighborhood because people don't want to live near these so-called half-way houses where, their critics claim, based on their personal observation, that at least some of the addicts continue to obtain drugs because of lax supervision. This is particularly the case, according to  Shawnee Sentinel reporter Wally Leedom,  at the Counseling Center's facility that claims to have the highest level of security, what he calls the Second Chance Drug House, which occupies the former juvenile detention center in Boneyfiddle, for which Hughes pays no rent to the county, according to Austin Leedom, Wally's father.   I am reprinting a succinct interview with a woman Wally Leedom posted last summer because it suggests that the Counseling Center's Second Chance facility is much less than perfect, in spite of the claim "We believe in miracles,"  and might more accurately be called the Multiple Chance Drug House.