'Not faith-based'
-- uh-huh, right, OK
It recently got around that the Yuba County supervisors were funding a right-wing Christian cult that's been offering to exorcise the devil out of Mormons, Masons, Muslims and many other otherwise misdirected souls.
A local rancher -- a devote Mason proud of the semi-secret society's sterling record of helping disabled and disadvantaged kids -- took umbrage. He demanded an accounting.
The board of supervisors ordered up a brief summary of the number of "faith-based" groups with which the county Department of Health and Human Services "out-sourced" teen pregnancy prevention, alcohol and drug abuse counseling and other social programs to the tune of $750,000 over the last three years.
That's big bucks for a chronically poor county with an annual budget running a skimpy $107 million.
The HHS report did not take into account the amounts also flowing to the evangelical book-banners loosely associated with the Yuba County Office of Education.
The subcontractors included several fundamentalist non-denominational denominational bidnesses of the smarmy, ain't-we-blessed, praise-God, smite-mine-enemies, and Hallelujah! kind found lurking wherever government contracts are awarded.
The main milk-and-honey funnel for the faith-based bidnesses attached to HHS was Yuba-Sutter Friday Night Live, a state registered non-profit organization, according to HHS's three-page report on which of God's Chil'n got the gold.
When pressed to what faith the group was based on, an FNL spokespeson said, "None." She flatly denied FNL was "faith-based- -- "not in any way, whatsoever."
Pretty emphatic, and we'll have to take the official at her word, since we have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and, besides, it's tacky to inquire into people's church connections. No matter how far out on their sleeves they wear them, nor how intensely they capitalize on them.
Meanwhile, after enough time had passed for all the parties to talk to each, HHS called to explain that the report had been poorly worded and that, no, indeed, HHS does not regard FNL to be "faith-based," as the report had strongly implied.
OK, so now the official line is that while many of the sub-subcontractros may be faith-based, the inulgence-dispensing FNL is not.
Problem is, that runs contrary to the daily perceptions of several people familiar with Yuba County politics.
So we called on the first-hand experience of a former government insider now on the outside for (not so long ago) running afoul of certain elected county officials who are well known for campaigning for their offices from and through church pulpits about town.
"Not faith-based? Of course they'd say that. They're too sly to admit it. But all anyone has to do is walk into their offices and they'll know in a minute what the score is," our well-informed source contended.
For the record: on the board of directors sit a high county school official who campaigns every election on a fundamentalist platform and a well-placed lawyer who volunteered his time to prosecute in a canonical court ministers who bless same-sex marriages.
Oh, and, by the way. FNL's official, publicly-proclaimed, full-missionary position on birth control methods and alternatives? Well, let's see. There's abstinence, and then there's abstinence and, after that, there's more abstinence.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, is the fact that Yuba County continues to sport one of the state's highest teen pregnancy rates, while at least two of the county supervisors have publicly wondered aloud why it is they just can't seem to wangle a meaningful report on the issue out of FNL and its faith-based subcontractor.
Faith-based? Not faith-based? You be the judge.
Meanwhile, remember. Everything reported in Cannibal City is: confidential, hush-hush, off the record and strictly on the Q-T.