[John Young is opinion page editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald in Waco, Texas. This essay was distributed nationwide in February 2001 by Cox News Service and is printed below with permission.]
For a president who trumpets less government, it is odd that one of George W. Bush's first moves was to create the Office in Charge of Reinventing the Wheel.
That's not the real name. It's just more fitting than the actual name: the Office of Faith-Based Action.
Bush's office would reinvent a wheel that has rolled for decades, with and without government's involvement.
This is no news bulletin. Non-profit groups with religious roots long have been receiving federal dollars. Key distinction: To do so they must jump through strategically placed hoops and lay themselves bare for accountability. They become public.
Now Bush seeks to liberalize the process, to put more tax dollars into faith-based groups. Citizens should be skeptical and demand accountability.
There's no need for what Bush plans. It seeks to do what is already being done. All Bush needs is this abbreviation: 501(c)(3).
It's how non-profit groups, many with church affiliations, serve communities across the nation. Based on an extensive track record of doing good, they sign a contract with a federal agency. However, that contract requires them to work as public entities, rather than as private entities. It requires them not to discriminate, not to lobby, not to engage in partisan politics, and not to use their status as a government contractor to proselytize their faith.
In Waco, Meals on Wheels is administered by a faith-based organization -- Central Texas Senior Ministries. The agency was started by the Methodist Conference in 1967 and has been receiving federal funds for three decades.
Any faith-based organization could apply to do exactly the same. But it must play by the rules of public non-profit corporations, not by church rules.
The question, really, is one of accountability and the need for bureaucratic control over the administering of public money.
Anyone who has bad things to say about bureaucracy should step back and consider the bad things they were saying about the Emma L. Harrison Charter School in Waco, Texas, when it was discovered that teachers weren't getting paid, debts were mounting, and management was telling citizens to butt out.
Aghast, these citizens were witnessing a school without bureaucratic controls.
Implicit in the Bush initiative to open up more public money for faith-based groups is the same naiveté that resulted in the charter school horror stories that are sprinkled among successes in Texas.
The Bush-prodded Texas Legislature was wishing on rainbows six years ago when it assumed that good intentions alone would prevail among people who sought charter schools. Who needs bureaucracy?
The charter-school horror stories since should be sufficient for all to appreciate bureaucrats anew.
The same Pollyanna principles seem to be employed in the quest to turn more social services over to churches.
But the standards for letting church groups administer public money should be higher than scrupulous, because of the imperative for government not to fund religion or to discriminate against people because of their faith or lack thereof.
Last week Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson voiced doubts about the prospect that Bush's plan might fund non-Judeo-Christian groups like Scientology or the Unification Church. Surprise.
Putting the pedal to the metal on funding church organizations inevitably will lead to court battles and the quest by church groups to accept public money and skirt public accountability.
This won't happen, however, if Bush and supporters realize the wheel they seek to reinvent is already in place. It's called 501(c)(3) for non-profits and it works in communities across the nation like ours.
Copyright 2001 John Young