The head of the Department of Health and Human Services in Nevada, Richard Whitley, says he’ll take the responsiblility for the state placing severely mentally ill persons in homes with squalid conditions. He says he was shocked by the findings of a new legislative audit. Whitley told the Reno Gazette Journal his staff leadership was unaware that the two state agencies in charge of providing care had been allowing their clients to live in filthy homes at taxpayer expense. He’s vowing to discover what went wrong. He told the RGJ, “I have to own the failure in our system for addressing these issues.”