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The National Child Protection and Training Center, the remarkable WSU-affiliated program that’s on a mission to protect children from exploitation and danger, found itself thrust into the national spotlight after it was revealed that a U.S. Department of Justice administrator had passed up the center when divvying up grant money, along with many other deserving programs, in favor of programs that he had personal connections to.
Favoritism? Maybe.
A game of politics? Probably.
But, adding insult to injury was the fact that the DOJ went through the hassle of reviewing and even ranking the grants based on the criteria the agency itself devised and developed.
Even worse, the National Child Protection and Training Center got the fourth-highest score. That’s the fourth-highest score in the nation. Yet, the justice department overlooked it. Winona State shouldn’t feel so bad, though. The top five programs were also passed over.
That’s when Minnesota 1st District Congressman Tim Walz stepped in, and an investigation was launched.
We applaud Walz for sticking up for the center, asking questions and pursuing this issue.
It’s not just watching out for a center that happens to be in his district; it’s about government accountability.
Moreover, the good work that’s being done at the National Child Protection and Training Center is felt in communities across the nation as lawyers, therapists, law enforcement officials and teachers have been trained there.
This wasn’t just some special-interest bacon in an already overcrowded federal barrel of pork. This money goes to help prepare adults to protect children.
Instead, the federal government thought a better use of its money might be a program designed to teach youth golf. Miraculously, that program was funded over the National Child Protection and Training Center, as was a program spearheaded by those who had a close relationship with J. Robert Flores, the man who made the final DOJ decisions. It appears the programs were ranked and prioritized based on close ties to the Republican party.
It’s classic old-style patronage, where loyal party supporters get money and positions not because of qualifications, but because of who they know and whose water they carried, so to speak.
And, politics and patronage are often linked, for better or, as is often the case, worse. Still, we can’t help but wonder why in the world the DOJ would put good, well-meaning organizations like the National Child Protection and Training Center through the effort of the grant-writing process only to waste its time?
And, why make DOJ staff rank applications if they’re meaningless?
It would seem a complete waste of taxpayer money and WSU time.
We thank Walz and other representatives, such as R. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., for the scrutiny, but we suggest that they didn’t go far enough. Not only is it a shame and a sham that WSU and other DOJ-approved grants got passed over, it seems to represent a waste of DOJ employees’ time. It’s time for more answers — if the process is rigged in the name of politics, then so be it. But it’s even worse than that, it’s wasteful, disingenuous and takes away time that could be spent helping protect children.
By Darrell Ehrlick, editor, on behalf of the Winona Daily News editorial board, which also includes publisher Rusty Cunningham and online editor Jerome Christenson.
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