Phillips Public Comments to BHEC Council June 2026
I'm Phillip Crum, Joe Citizen, and co-founder of AMHP.
Phillips Public Comments to BHEC Council
The last two years have seen positive new additions to all four boards. A renewed devotion to purpose, especially by the public members willing to question the professional members. That’s been extremely encouraging and I hope that trend continues.
The Problems We Face
That our new counselor development pipeline has been overrun by ideologues is the biggest problem this profession faces. We're awarding masters degrees to political activists who base their mental health practices on political theory, a group empathy mindset and feelings. We're licensing them and the people of TX get to pay for it in more than one way and that has to change.
The Council's Primary Duty
Given that your primary, State mandate is the protection of the citizens of TX, your #1 issue right now and the foreseeable future should be cleansing your licensee ranks of ideological incompetency. We have a very big problem that may not yet be represented in the complaint metrics but Texas can lead the country in this effort if we have the stomach for it.
Proving My Point
At the last LPC Board meeting a licensee phoned in her comments immediately following my own. In a somewhat condescending tone she asked if the public was allowed to make public comment at board meetings. She was clearly annoyed that I had said some things she apparently didn't agree with. Unfortunately I think that represents a pervasive attitude in the profession towards accountability to the public.
How Do We Fix This?
There are currently some promising measures underway at the Federal level to clean up the academic pipeline beginning with the accrediting organizations, flowing through the teaching institutions themselves and the professional organizations. That's being done through EO 14279 and the Dept of Education. Combined with measures being taken at the State level and there is light at the end of the tunnel.
I'd like to see the appropriate BHEC leadership talking to legislators about ways to raise competency requirements. It’s the legislature’s job to legislate and it’s BHEC’s job to protect the public so I don't see this as lobbying as much as proactive requests for the tools needed to carry out the agency's Primary Directive. There are ways to do that and we’re happy to discuss it if anyone is willing.
We need more citizens to do the same; work with legislators to demand a higher level of competency from our licensees and we're working on that. That's not racist and it's not oppressive. Competence needs to be drastically redefined at the academic level, and it will be, then either you have what it takes to meet requirements or you don't. Admission to this field should be based on merit, not fairness and feelings.
What We Want From The Council
We realize that cleaning up the academic pipeline that produces your licensees is not your responsibility nor is it within your power, but policing current licensees is, within the limitations of current State Code and Board regulations. Given SB's 14 & 12, AG Paxton's Opinion stating that licensees are "health care providers", and BHEC's own public four-page guideline statement of Mar 13th there is a lot you can do about enforcement and we need to be making sober examples of non-compliant licensees when and if those infractions occur. Very glad to see that adding those recent bills to the rulebooks is on today’s agenda. More of that, please.
Bottom-line, cleaning up the academic structure is not your problem. But enforcing State code is, and there is a lot you can do about that. I'd like to see this topic added to future meeting agendas and discussed openly.
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