`Charitable Choice' Off To Slow Start In States, Group Asserts.

"Charitable choice" -- the concept of giving religious groups largely unrestricted public funds to tackle social problems -- is being largely ignored in the states, a national group that promotes the idea has charged.

The Center for Public Justice, a conservative Christian policy group, complained last month that 40 states have not yet changed their policies to allow "faith-based" organizations to receive taxpayer money, despite a federal mandate that they do so.

According to the Center, only Texas, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin have fully embraced the concept. Those states earned A's under the Center's rating scale. Forty states earned F's.

Critics of the concept, including Americans United, assert that "charitable choice" raises serious constitutional concerns and may violate the First Amendment. AU says some states may not have implemented the change because their own state constitutions forbid any diversion of public funds to sectarian organizations.

State officials may also be waiting to see how the issue shakes out in the courts. Americans United and the American Civil Liberties Union have already filed one lawsuit against "charitable choice" in Kentucky and are exploring the possibility of future lawsuits. (The Kentucky case concerns a Baptist-run agency for troubled youth that fired a woman on religious grounds, even though the agency receives much of its budget from state coffers.)

"Charitable choice" proponents frequently claim that sectarian agencies are better equipped than government agencies to deal with social problems such as welfare relief, unemployment and substance abuse. However, their claims are largely anecdotal.

Stories about religious groups wasting taxpayer money exist as well. Recently a case came to light in Georgia of a religious group that took government funds to help refugees and ended up placing them in run-down and dangerous apartments.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Catholic Social Services accepted hundreds of thousands of federal dollars to help resettle refugees from various war-tom countries. But instead of getting the help they needed, the refugees were left to languish in filthy, cockroach-infested apartments in one of Atlanta's worst neighborhoods.

Refugees complained that they were not given help finding jobs or provided with access to medical care. Most were given no help dealing with immigration matters either.

"It was like hell for us," Andre Kayisabe, a native of the Congo, told the newspaper. "We were not part of America."

Another refugee, Nyator Gany, who was resettled to the United States from a refugee camp in Ethiopia, observed, "The refugee camp was better than here."

Thousands of refugees from war-torn nations are resettled in the United States every year. The State Department relies on 10 charities across the country to do the work, including Catholic Charities. The charities get $740 for each refugee to help with resettlement costs. Agencies are expected to pair the money with their own funds to help the refugees make the transition. State Department regulations require that refugees be placed in "safe and decent" housing."

Church officials in Atlanta began moving the refugees out of the complex after the report came to light. Kathi Stearns, vice chancellor in charge of special projects for the Archdiocese of Atlanta, which oversees the Catholic group, told the newspaper, "This is clearly not acceptable. What I saw on Friday [at the apartments] was so horrid I don't even have the words to describe it."

The day after the story ran, Bui Van Tam, who had overseen refugee services for the archdiocese, resigned and apologized to Archbishop John F. Donoghue of Atlanta after it came to light that some of the refugees had been housed in a sub-standard apartment complex owned by Tam's wife.