Guest colunmn: Ministry falls victim to thuggish bureaucracy

By Roger Koopman

One of the reasons I ran for the Legislature was to return a sense of balance and decency to government. There are too many state mandates that harass people's lives and caused honest citizens to fear their government. A free people should not live in fear of bureaucratic excesses and arbitrary power.

Once upon a time, there was a Christian ministry called Sacred Portion Children's Outreach. To understand its good work, one need only look into the faces of the 49 teenagers who came to our valley to live with carefully screened host families during the past four years. By the end of their four-to-six-week stay, these kids learned something about America, and a whole lot about the meaning of love.

They were Russian and Filipino orphans who the professionals wrote off as too old for anyone to want. But experts don't have a formula that factors in Christian love, and over the course of the summer, many of these orphans and their host families quite literally fell in love. Forty-three of these "unplaceable" kids are now the adopted children of Montana parents, and incredibly, every single one of these adoptions has succeeded.

But this is where the fairy tale turns to tragedy. Earlier this year, the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services determined that Sacred Portion is a public menace and moved swiftly to shut them down. Why? Because the DPHHS has suddenly decided that Sacred Portion is running an illegal adoption agency without a government license!

There are two obvious problems with this bureaucratic muscle-flexing: 1) Sacred Portion isn't an adoption agency and doesn't function like one, and 2) in all the years it has operated, there hasn't been a single complaint of any kind. DPHHS is responding to a problem that doesn't exist.

Certainly, Sacred Portion's organizers are delighted when their host families decide to adopt, and they don't hide the fact that they see adoption as a great option for these kids. But the state says you can't even think or speak this way without a license! In actuality, the program plays no part in the adoption process, which is handled by an entirely separate, state licensed adoption agency. Sacred Portion does not screen or make lists of host families based on their willingness to adopt, nor do they even mention adoption to the hosted orphans. Nothing in their ministry solicits for or assists in adoptions.

Bureaucrats claim they were unaware of Sacred Portion's activities until now, but I don't buy it. The program has been highly visible, and all the adoptions have all been reported to the state. But the DPHHS, under the "New Day" Schweitzer administration, now decides to lower the boom on these people without warning. When confronted, the department's only response is the mantra "we must enforce the law." And it won't end there. Next, they want to force all host families to be trained and licensed as foster parents! No doubt that move will permanently kill the program. One can only wonder who is next in their sights -- host families of foreign exchange students perhaps?

Jan and Craig Druckenmiller are constituents of mine. When they brought their plight to my attention, I immediately called the DPHHS for an explanation of their bizarre interpretation of law. In a brief memo first sent to Schweitzer advisor Anna Whiting-Sorrell (prejudicially entitled "summer adoption camps"), department attorney Kim Kradolfer cited the statutes, but offered almost no legal analysis of the law or the facts. My discussion with a staff attorney at the Legislative Services Division was much more enlightening. His conclusion was that the law was very confusing and in some places "made no sense" at all. He felt that surely DPHHS would negotiate a temporary agreement with Sacred Portion to save this summer's program. In the meantime, I planned to introduce legislation to clean up the law's vague language, which the bureaucracy has used to expand its power.

This is classic example of government run amok -- of aggressive, heavy-handed bureaucrats with a "gotcha" mentality, substituting for true public servants who seek to help. A public servant would look at the matter, acknowledge that the law is confusing, but seeing no problem or compelling public interest for shutting down the program, would err on the side of allowing, not prohibiting. They would see the human faces of all the people the program has benefited, and would try to work things out.

My intention was to organize a meeting with the Druckenmillers and DPHHS, and reach a compromise. In the meantime, another legislator tried to help by approaching the governor directly. Based on Kradolfer's memo, Schweitzer refused to investigate the matter further and approved the arbitrary actions of his bureaucracy. When faced with the opportunity to allow a "new day" for a bunch of orphan kids, our compassionate governor turned and walked away.

This is a human tragedy that never should have happened. A kinder and gentler government would have set aside their bureaucratic edicts and sought a negotiated solution. A kinder and gentler Brian Schweitzer would have shown a measure of human understanding, and extended his hand, not for votes, but for lifting up a few kids. The kids left behind in the Philippines can't vote. But they know how to cry.

Roger Koopman is a Republican state representative from Bozeman.

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