[Futurework] Signs of the times

[Karen Watters Cole]

Given the House and soon the Senate may pass an omnibus budget bill that fiscal conservatives are fuming about because of the federal deficit and our budgetary imbalances, this item summarized by yours truly from The Oregonian front page, below the fold, seemed a tad unjust and surreal, don’t you think?  KWC   Center Loses Grants by Slimmest of Margins   A drug-and-alcohol treatment center in Medford, Oregon had two grant applications rejected because it used page margins that were less than an inch wide.  The executive director of OnTrack Inc., Rita Sullivan, said the grants would have totaled $703,000/year.  The application page margins were two-tenths of an inch too small, something a printer or copier could have done inadvertently.   Sen. Wyden (D-OR) has written HHS Sec. Thompson demanding that the agency review the applications on their merits.   Mark Weber, spokesman for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said that agency officials would still have to verify the reason for rejection but said rules were written to ensure fairness.  “If someone doesn’t follow the rules, as silly as they may seen at times, it can put them at an unfair advantage,” he said. “The folks who did follow the rules then might lose out because we bent the rules a little to allow someone else to come in.”   Indeed. Forty-six of 186 applications for a program for adolescents were rejected for technical reasons, as were 29 of 72 applications for a program for mothers.   In his letter to Thompson, Wyden wrote that the Medford facility, which treats about 5,000 patients a year, had received grants in previous years using the same format, but that agency staff had begun enforcing technical rules to limit competition for scarce funds.   - originally by Jim Barnett, The Oregonian, Wednesday, December 03, 2003