COLUMBUS, Ohio (ABP) — Amid an investigation into the actions of the state's office of faith-based initiatives, Ohio officials have terminated a contract with a large organization closely tied to President Bush's efforts to fund government services through religious charities.
State officials sent a March 21 termination letter to the Virginia-based group We Care America, according to the Dayton Daily News. The letter reportedly cited the organization's refusal to answer questions from state investigators.
The non-profit group describes itself on its website as supporting “faith-based and community organizations that serve people in need by supporting and leveraging public, corporate and private resources.” It also says it's “compelled by it's [sic] God-given mission to help Christian organizations build their capacity to serve those in need by influencing decision makers, sharing best practices, accessing new resources, and mobilizing volunteers for service.”
Two years ago, We Care America received a $2.1-million contract from the governor's office to administer $22 million in federal grants, for which faith-based organizations were eligible.
New Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D) recently ordered the state's inspector general to investigate the Ohio Governor's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The agency is one of several that state governments have established in recent years. It is modeled after a similar White House office that Bush created.
However, according to experts in faith-based charity work, the Ohio office is unique because it was created legislatively rather than by a governor's executive action. After Strickland replaced Gov. Bob Taft (R), under whose administration the office opened, the new governor replaced the office's staff.
At the time, he criticized the way the office had been run under Taft. “This was like an ATM machine for some of the most politically right-wing organizations,” Strickland told the Daily News. He added: “It just really seems as if this is an example of where money that should've legitimately gone to serve the needs of the poor and vulnerable people in Ohio was in my judgment misused, and it was done in the name of God. It's just reprehensible what happened here.”
Those charges echoed warnings from advocates of strict church-state separation.
The Dayton newspaper has published a series of articles investigating the office and the We Care America grant. The stories disclose ties between the White House and the group's leaders. The Daily News reports also cited questionable expenditures under the contract, such as the purchase of two giant flat-screen television sets for the group's now-closed Ohio office, rental of two parking spaces in downtown Columbus, and $6,000 to commission a study that lauded the governor's faith-based office.
Requests for comment from We Care America were not returned by press time for this story. Although the phone number given on the group's website had a Northern Virginia area code, an automated outgoing voice-mail message indicated a Missouri area code.
Other news reports said the telephones were disconnected at the organization's Virginia headquarters.
According to the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, a non-partisan group that tracks the faith-based effort, a former We Care America official called the Dayton newspaper reports inaccurate but declined to comment specifically on the organization. David Mills, We Care America's former vice president for grants and program management, also said the situation in Ohio was “very political” due to the change in administrations. A spokesman for Strickland refuted the characterization.
The office's director under Taft also disputed the idea that any of its contracts were politicized. “If you conducted a survey of the political affiliation (if any) of organizations [the office] partnered with … contracted with, and made grants to, I think any reasonable person would be hard-pressed to discern a political bias in those partnerships, contracts or grants precisely because awards were based upon the merits of their proposals as determined by the state procurement process,” Krista Sisterhen told the Roundtable.
She also said her office “was unaware of any suggestion that We Care America had such [political] 'ties.'”
The organization recently filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Bush administration's side in a Supreme Court case regarding the ability of taxpayers to file lawsuits for violations of a First Amendment ban on government support for religion.
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