An interview with An Interview with Jay Hein, Director of the White House
Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

Jay F. Hein was named by President George W. Bush on August 3 as Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Prior to his appointment, Hein, 41, was the founding president of the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research, an international public policy research firm headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. In that capacity, Hein oversaw research that includes work on welfare and faith-based initiatives. Hein has also served as chief executive officer of the Foundation for American Renewal, a charity founded by former Ambassador Daniel R. Coats that provides grants and other support to community-based nonprofits. He previously served as executive director of Civil Society Programs at the Hudson Institute, overseeing research on welfare policy, community-based healthcare and the Faith in Communities initiative. Earlier in his career, he was a welfare reform advisor to then-Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson. Hein is editor and co-author of two books: The New Wisconsin Idea: Replacing Entitlement Welfare with Personal Empowerment; and The Welfare of Britain. Hein also serves as an elder at Grace Community Church, an evangelical congregation in Noblesville, Indiana.

Jay F. Hein , Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives The Roundtable: The 10-year anniversary of congressional passage of the welfare reform law and its "Charitable Choice" provision was on August 22. Has Charitable Choice realized its potential or is there more to be done to advance its goals? Jay Hein: Charitable Choice changed the direction of social policy in the United States and it is still being worked out in terms of its impact and influence in grant making. But I would like to talk about the welfare law first. Welfare reform was an ideal place for our country to reconsider how effectively we respond to the needs of the poor. On the heels of numerous social policies and experiments, we found that government needed to be reoriented to more effectively fund and deliver those services. While that has been a successful law and is still working its application out in various states, it focused on a government-centered question about how federal, state and local governments can more effectively deliver public services. Charitable Choice became a segue to a broader societal concern about: how does America, collectively in a multi-sector way, respond to the needs of the poor? Charitable Choice focused on nongovernmental actors, in particular the faith community that has historically served the poor, and enabled government and the faith community to have more effective partnership opportunities. The Roundtable: So, has Charitable Choice reached its potential in that regard or is there more work for your office? Jay Hein: Charitable Choice has given us a new platform to create competitive contracting arrangements so government can achieve its ultimate aim of hiring the most effective service providers, whether public or private, whether secular or faith-based. The question of Charitable Choice is not preferential treatment for faith-based organizations, but greater inclusion of faith-based organizations to compete for funds and perform at its highest level in service delivery. I think Charitable Choice has successfully achieved that end. It was a rebalancing of the church/state question. Has it fully realized its promise? There are important questions that the Roundtable helped us to better understand and other groups are working out in public policy conversations, research and evaluations. It is a work in progress, but Charitable Choice has expanded now to other federal programs and that is an expression of its continuing influence and success. The Roundtable: What does the Bush administration have planned to expand implementation of Charitable Choice by the states? What are the plans to incorporate this in more state and local jurisdictions? Jay Hein: The primary focus with state and local officials is the ongoing work of helping them understand the laws and effectively administer them. That is something this office has been active in promoting. Through our White House conferences, we have trained more than 20,000 individuals. Oftentimes, those are faith and community-based organization leaders who want to understand how they might more effectively participate in government programs. But it also includes state and local officials who administer these programs and who need to continually gain a better understanding of how to apply them. That has been a key priority of the office, and as the initiative expands and grows, that is a very important direction for us to move in because we are talking about the administration of these programs and not theoretical debate. We are trying, in real time, to get better services out to the people who need them. When I was a private researcher, we spent a lot of time looking at the application of Charitable Choice because while some of the important constitutional provisions are continuing to be debated in policy circles, program administrators in every state are implementing them. We were interested as researchers in seeing how effectively they were being implemented. Now that I am in this chair, I am even more interested in seeing they are implemented effectively. The Roundtable: Will there be a push through the newly issued regulations for TANF under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005? Jay Hein: It [regulations implementing the Deficit Reduction Act] does not change welfare law. It does not change the character of our training because it did not change the provisions of the law. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and its Administration for Children and Families are training state and local officials on the new terms of the welfare policy so that presents an opportunity to talk to state and local officials again about how Charitable Choice is applied. But Charitable Choice was not affected by any new policies or regulations. It is still a central part of the law. The Roundtable: How much emphasis will you place on vouchers as a mechanism for indirect government funding to faith-based and community organizations? Will the administration work to reverse the current congressional proposal to fund substance abuse treatment through general block grants rather than the President’s three-year-old Access To Recovery program? Jay Hein: The President has been very consistent in his message that indirect funding is a key priority of this administration, and Access To Recovery was a State of the Union initiative that he launched. He understands the value of indirect funding much along what the Roundtable has articulated: that vouchers provide very strong legal footing for faith-based organizations to participate in the delivery of public services and are empowering to the consumer who takes more responsibility for their paths to healing or self-sufficiency. For those reasons, we will continue to be strong advocates of indirect funding provisions. We remain very committed to seeing Access To Recovery successfully implemented by states. This administration is fully supportive of the Access To Recovery initiative, and therefore, is fully committed to seeing it remain as a separately funded initiative. The Roundtable: Are there other new programs in which you will incorporate vouchers? Jay Hein: I will be working with the cabinet agencies to discover which programs would be good candidates for indirect funding within the context of promoting consumer choice. One of the exciting elements of my position is how this office is structured to work in close partnership with the domestic policy council. We are looking to integrate our strategies more effectively with the agencies in motion, and not just have a few ideas that we are going to push out to the agencies from this office. Within a broader compassionate conservative agenda, we are looking to add value to the continual improvement of policy creation and program administration that these agencies are responsible for on a day-to-day basis. We want to integrate our portfolio within their operations more effectively. Indirect funding will be one of the priorities that we discuss with them. The Roundtable: The Bush Administration changed federal regulations so that religious organizations receiving federal money can employ staff based on their religious beliefs. Will your office continue to seek statutory religious hiring provisions through congressional legislation? Jay Hein: We are training and educating policy makers on what the religious hiring provisions mean. It is our understanding that there is legal protection and precedent for faith-based groups to protect the religious nature of their organizations’ character. We will continue to train on that, but that is within the context of broader First Amendment parameters we also very vigilantly train. We draw a very bright line between what activities federal dollars cannot pay for and the appropriate service performed by these organizations that federal dollars can support. The religious hiring issue falls within the broader context of how government forms a financial relationship with a religious organization. While we support continued legally-productive protection for these groups to hire according to their religious character, it does not mean that we do not also train them to understand to protect the religious liberties of those who they serve. The Roundtable: Will your office pursue legislative approval of more tax incentives to promote charitable giving? Jay Hein: The privatization of the faith initiative that looks at private and corporate philanthropy and tax credits remain a strong interest in the Administration. I am meeting soon with Diana Aviv, president and CEO of Independent Sector, and we will be talking about nonprofit sector strategies, broadly speaking, and how we can continue to grow and strengthen the sector. This initiative has been very active, one of the most active presidential initiatives in the modern era underscoring the value of the nonprofit sector and seeking to provide more resources, both financial and non-financial [to the nonprofit sector]. The Roundtable: Will you seek to incorporate faith-based organizations into more policy areas such as disaster relief and Medicare and Medicaid reform? Jay Hein: As the President gives more attention to the unique and powerful role that faith and community groups play in society, new opportunities are identified for these groups to play a larger role in public service. I think Katrina is a remarkable illustration of two things: the unprecedented and unique role that faith and community groups play in identifying who needs to be served and, through their relationships with those in need, being able to meet human needs. But Katrina also showed that it takes great vigilance for us to continue to design new strategies to coordinate between the sectors. We spend a lot of time talking about financial relationships, and that is an important part of the conversation. But there are a lot of non-financial relationships that are important. Katrina showed there were a lot of private and public dollars at play, but we need to continually discern effective strategies for various levels of government and private agencies to communicate and coordinate. This administration has already instilled a number of new strategies, including the establishment of a faith-based office at the Department of Homeland Security, to address this point. That has effect in both directions. As government, we need to be discerning about how we effectively engage in these partnerships. And the grassroots organizations need to understand that they do not go straight to FEMA. They need to work with state and local officials. There are processes in place that will help them, before a crisis occurs, to establish stronger partnerships with their public sector. The Roundtable: You met with President Bush upon taking this job. Can you describe the conversation? Jay Hein: The President shared his vision for the office and underscored the importance that this initiative holds in his list of priorities, which has been high and remains very high. He wanted me to know the seriousness in which he cares about the results we can achieve through this initiative and the continued importance this is to him as he speaks to Americans about what makes our country great, which he understands to be measured largely by the compassion of our people. The Roundtable: Thank you for speaking with us.