E-Mail This Article to a Friend Not keeping the faith Mitt Romney has dragged his feet on George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative — costing the state millions of dollars and allowing local religious groups to wield the power of the purse strings BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

TO HEAR MITT Romney tell it, Massachusetts could withstand the pain of cutbacks to social programs in part by relying on church-affiliated groups to provide necessary services to the poor and the disabled. Running for governor two years ago, Romney touted George Bush’s faith-based initiative in his campaign literature and on the stump. Since then, Bush has fulfilled his promise of awarding billions of dollars in federal grants to religious groups. But for his part, Romney has not helped Massachusetts get its share. He has done almost nothing, in fact, beyond showing up at the occasional photo-op, as when, in May 2003, the Department of the Interior announced its first preservation grant for a religious building, at Boston’s Old North Church. Not only have Romney’s budgets been mum about faith-based organizations (FBOs), he hasn’t even created, as more than 30 states have, a faith-based-initiative liaison office to help connect local FBOs with federal and state money. When it comes to faith-based initiatives, the Bay State is a national laggard.

That has come as something of a surprise to the Bush White House. "There was more of an expectation on the federal administration’s part that when Romney came into office that there would be a lot more attention paid to it," says Marilyn Lasky, New England director for the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families. It’s especially puzzling given that Governor Romney would not have to look very far to find an obvious choice to head an FBO liaison office. First Lady Ann Romney has co-chaired the United Way of Massachusetts Bay’s Faith in Action Committee since its inception six years ago, and all indications are that she’d be willing to helm the initiative for the state. "I know from my own conversations with her that this is something she is very interested in," says Marilyn Chase, United Way’s vice-president of community investments. Nevertheless, establishing an office in the State House has not moved beyond the discussion level.

It’s costing the state real dollars, and depriving its residents of real services, as federal agencies choose to fund FBOs in other states over secular service providers here. Massachusetts got less than two percent of $45.6 million handed out in August for mentoring children of prisoners, none of $100 million awarded the same day for substance-abuse-treatment programs, and none of nearly $13 million awarded to 114 primarily faith-based recipients through the Compassion Capital Fund. The same is true in one federal grant program after another. "There are federal funds that are available to organizations that assist and support people in Massachusetts, and our state has a responsibility to help obtain those funds," says Chase.

Three veterans’ shelters, for instance, were turned down this year for grants they used to receive from the US Department of Labor’s Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program. "The reason was their decision to get a better geographic distribution and to fund more faith-based organizations," says Stephen Spain, development director at the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans. "Department people told us that specifically." Where is the money going instead? To FBOs like the Salvation Army, in Los Angeles; the North County Interfaith Council, in San Diego; the St. Patrick Center, in St. Louis; the Community Christian Ministry, in North Carolina; and Volunteers of America, in Kentucky and West Virginia.

In fact, after the United Veterans of America shelter in Leeds, located in Western Massachusetts, lost its grant in 2003, director John Downing hired two chaplains and registered as a faith-based organization. The shelter has since received $2 million in federal grants and loans.

Well over $50 billion worth of annual federal grants that were once awarded only to secular organizations are now open to FBOs, for everything from abstinence education to workforce development. "We have opened up many, many of our funding opportunities," says Lasky. "Even when they are only open to state agencies, there is language encouraging those agencies to partner with faith-based organizations to do the work." By ignoring the faith-based initiative, Massachusetts is fishing for funds where they no longer bite.

THE BAY STATE’S neglect of faith-based initiatives dates back to 1996, when Bill Clinton’s welfare-reform legislation created "Charitable Choice." That directive encouraged states to provide welfare services through small, grassroots religious organizations, which were allowed to maintain some of their "religious character" — a movement that Bush later expanded through five executive orders and a slew of departmental-rule changes. Massachusetts’s implementation of Clinton’s initiative has been repeatedly rated as nonexistent — one report gives the state a grade of F, and others say much the same thing. This, despite an amenable political and policy environment in the state, according to a Center for Urban Policy and the Environment (CUPE) report last year. Massachusetts has used FBOs as social-service providers for years, although it has stuck with large entities such as Catholic Charities and the Jewish Vocational Service, which keep their service arms independent of their religious activity. The Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance alone contracts with 30 different FBOs, the report says. Yet the state did nothing at all in response to the federal Charitable Choice directive to expand the use of those groups, and, in particular, to engage smaller, community-level organizations. And that resistance, or indifference, has continued with respect to the Bush initiative. Why?

It has less to do with legal or philosophical hurdles, the CUPE report says, and more to do with Beacon Hill’s "classic institutional bias toward retaining existing organizational arrangements." Those arrangements, moreover, are often not the kind that appeal to federal agencies, says Pat Brandes, senior adviser with the Barr Foundation, in Boston. The feds prefer to fund result-oriented "car-wash programs," as Brandes puts it: clients come in one end, go through a standardized program, and go out the other. "Frankly, Boston tends to do things differently from a lot of parts of the country," Brandes says. Here, we tend toward complex, collaborative programs where everybody needs to have a seat at the table, and more effort goes to reaching consensus than simply to providing a service.

While Massachusetts has idled, other parts of the country have been active — and as a result, small and midsize churches in the Bible Belt and Midwest have learned the complicated process and built the necessary infrastructure to win federal grants. "A federal grant is the most difficult grant to get," says Chase. "The reality of what is expected and desired is a huge barrier."

That’s why the White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives has been actively promoting grants to FBOs through publications and by holding local conferences and seminars. In most parts of the country, FBOs of all sizes are now up to speed and applying for grants directly — receiving over a billion dollars’ worth in fiscal year 2003 and much more in the fiscal year just ending.

In Massachusetts, however, few potential grant beneficiaries are at that stage. Even when the White House brought its faith-based-initiative conference to Boston this July, over half of the attendees were from outside the state, say people who attended.