Subject: [AthofSV] FFRF in the News

From: "Gary Berger" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 16:49:14 +0000

FFRF in the News

The Freedom From Religion Foundation's criticism of a plan to create a 
Minnesota faith-based office is quoted in the Associated Press news story 
which ran today, March 16, 2005, based on an interview with Minnesota Public 
Radio. The link below brings you directly to the article, or read the text 
which follows:

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/03/16_mccalluml_faithbased/

Group plans suit against Minnesota over faith-based initiatives
by Laura McCallum , Minnesota Public Radio
March 15, 2005

St. Paul, Minn. -- Gov. Pawlenty announced his faith-based proposal last 
week, as part of his revised budget. He's asking the Legislature to approve 
$300,000 to hire a coordinator and create a Minnesota Council of Faith-based 
Initiatives. The council would help faith-based groups get state grants to 
provide social services. Pawlenty says Minnesota faith-based organizations 
have long provided social services in the state.

"Often times that service is not coordinated or aligned very well with the 
state's public policy goals, even though that faith based organizations in 
many cases are legally qualifying for participating in these grants and the 
like," Pawlenty said.

State officials say Minnesota hasn't tracked how much state money flows to 
faith-based groups. But it seems likely to increase under Pawlenty's 
proposal, if the federal initiative is any indication. The White House says 
faith-based groups received $1.3 billion from five major federal agencies in 
2004. That's an increase of $165 million from 2003, at a time when total 
grant funding from those agencies was shrinking.

Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation successfully sued the Bush 
administration over a faith-based grant. In January, a judge prohibited the 
administration from giving money to an Arizona mentoring group that injected 
religion into its publicly funded programs.

Freedom From Religion Foundation co-founder Annie Laurie Gaylor says her 
organization plans to sue the state of Minnesota over a faith-based grant, 
although she declined to give details. And she says state initiatives like 
the one Pawlenty is proposing raise similar constitutional questions.

"It is showing preference to religion and endorsing religion, and the 
websites that are funded through the state are intermingling the state logos 
with religion, and I think it's a very ripe kind of violation to litigate," 
according to Gaylor.

The Pawlenty administration believes the state initiative is legal. The 
faith-based coordinator would work in the department of administration, 
where commissioner Dana Badgerow says her office researched the 
constitutionality of the initiative. Badgerow says religious groups were 
limited from competing for federal money until 1996, when President Clinton 
signed the Charitable Choice Act into law.

"And that allowed state governments to direct federal money to religious 
groups. And so once that broke down those initial barriers, I think that's 
opened the doors now for a lot more things to happen," Badgerow said.

Badgerow says the Pawlenty administration is looking for creative ways to 
supplement state funding, in light of the budget cuts of recent years. 
Minnesota faces a projected deficit of $466 million in the next two-year 
budget cycle.

In his budget, Pawlenty proposed cutting some health and human services 
programs and trimming state government.

Some lawmakers question the need for his faith-based initiative, at the same 
time Pawlenty is proposing budget cuts. The chair of the Senate State 
Government Budget Division, Sheila Kiscaden, IP-Rochester, says lawmakers 
will have to weigh the governor's proposal against competing needs in state 
government.

"It's a priority for him, but ... we would have to trade off existing 
services like the Land Management Information Center, which has had a lot of 
people come forward and say that that would be a loss that would be hard to 
replace, that local governments could not do this," Kiscaden says.

The Land Management Information Center works with local governments on 
high-tech mapping and other technologies. Gov. Pawlenty is recommending that 
the center's funding be cut by more than $800,000 a year.

If Pawlenty succeeds in getting the Legislature to approve his faith-based 
proposal, Minnesota would join the 20 other states with similar initiatives. 
Most, but not all, are led by Republican governors. The North Dakota 
Legislature has just approved the concept, and the measure is on its way to 
Republican Gov. John Hoeven's desk.

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