- Originally published in The New York Times March 21, 2005 Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
By STEPHANIE STROM
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
is locked in a standoff with the Internal Revenue Service, preferring
to risk its tax exemption rather than hand over documents for an I.R.S.
review that the civil rights group contends is politically motivated.
While it is rare for an organization to defy the I.R.S. openly, the
N.A.A.C.P. is not the only group that believes it is being made a
government target for its positions on issues.
Roughly a dozen nonprofit organizations have publicly contended that
government agencies and Congressional offices have used reviews,
audits, investigations, law enforcement actions and the threat of a
loss of federal money to discourage them from activities and advocacy
that in any way challenge government policies, and nonprofit leaders
say more are complaining quietly.
''In
previous administrations, there's been the occasional instance of what
might appear to be retaliation, but when it started happening in a
serial way, it began to look like a pattern to us,'' said Kay Guinane,
counsel for the nonprofit advocacy project of OMB Watch, a government
watchdog group that has published two reports on the issue.
Government agencies, which are under increasing financial pressure
themselves, say they are merely enforcing rules on use of public money
and nonprofit assets. Federal law prohibits organizations from using
government financing for lobbying purposes, and tax law limits the use
of charitable assets in general for lobbying.
''In the 1990's and early 2000's, some of our grantees hadn't been
reviewed, hadn't had a site visit in some time,'' said Kathy Harben, a
spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ''In
October 2002, the financial management office renewed its commitment to
reviewing funded programs through regular site visits.''
Gauging whether liberal groups are being singled out for review more
than conservative ones is almost impossible to determine because
audits, investigations and threats are rarely made public.
Liz Towne, director of advocacy programs for the Alliance for Justice,
a group that educates charities about how to avoid running afoul of tax
laws that restrict their ability to lobby, said, ''When we talked to
the brain trust of lawyers who represent nonprofits around the country,
they were saying, 'Well, I don't know if we see a pattern that goes
beyond the usual kinds of complaints and investigations.'''
But, she added, the group sensed a ''higher level of attention to
nonprofits and their activities and that people are getting more
sophisticated in how to get nonprofits to back off their message.''
The review of the N.A.A.C.P.
comes after the organization's chairman, Julian Bond, gave a speech at
its 2004 convention sharply criticizing the Republicans, President Bush
and Vice President Dick Cheney. The tax agency reminded the N.A.A.C.P.
that tax-exempt organizations were barred from supporting or opposing
any candidate.
After the organization complained that it was a political target, the
I.R.S. commissioner, Mark W. Everson, asked the inspector general of
the Treasury Department to review the I.R.S. process of choosing which
groups to investigate for politicking.
Last month, the inspector general concluded that political
considerations had no role in the I.R.S.'s selection of an organization
for review. Of 40 cases studied by the inspector general, 18 were
characterized as involving ''pro-Republican'' organizations, 12
''pro-Democratic'' and one ''pro-Green.'' The inspector general was
unable to determine the affiliation of the other nine. The inspector
general also looked at 20 cases the I.R.S. declined to review and found
8 were ''pro-Republican'' and 4 ''pro-Democratic.''
The agency also heard complaints of selective enforcement under the
Clinton administration, but a study by the General Accounting Office,
the investigative arm of Congress, found no evidence then of I.R.S.
wrongdoing.
A spokesman for the N.A.A.C.P.,
John White, said last week that it was waiting for the I.R.S. to make
the next move. The tax agency says it does not comment on specific
cases.
Another agency that says it has
been singled out for government scrutiny is Advocates for Youth, which
operates programs that educate young people around the world about
reproductive health and has received federal money for various programs
for more than two decades.
It opposes the
Bush administration's push for the adoption of programs that advocate
abstinence as the only way to prevent childhood pregnancy and sexual
transmission of diseases.
In September
2002, 24 Republicans in Congress sent a letter to Tommy G. Thompson,
then the secretary of health and human services, demanding an audit and
accusing Advocates for Youth of violating the law by using federal
money to support lobbying. Its activities included visiting
Congressional offices to distribute a report by the Institute of
Medicine that questioned the efficacy of abstinence-only sex education.
James Wagoner, the president of Advocates for Youth, said the group has
strict internal procedures to ensure that federal support backs only
programs for children. ''It was bare-knuckled intimidation,'' Mr.
Wagoner said of the Congressional request.
A month later, the C.D.C., which is part of the Health and Human
Services Department, asked Advocates for Youth to demonstrate with
documentation that none of its money had been used for lobbying
activities.
In January 2003, the
General Accounting Office, now known as the Government Accountability
Office, informed the group that at the request of Representatives
Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey and Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, both
Republicans, it was investigating how much federal money Advocates for
Youth and organizations like it spent on international and domestic
activities. The G.A.O. review documented how the groups spent their
federal financing, but did not touch on the issue of lobbying.
Two months after the report was released, the centers subjected the
organization to a ''business and financial evaluation,'' also at the
behest of the two congressmen.
Advocates
said it spent $100,000, or more than 2 percent of its annual budget,
responding to the agencies' requests. To date, it says it has not been
told the results of the C.D.C. reviews.
Another organization, the Global Health Council, lost financial
commitments from the United States Agency for International
Development, the C.D.C. and the Health Resources and Services
Administration for the council's annual conference last year. The
centerpiece of the conference was a debate on preventing the
transmission of H.I.V. among youth.
Dr.
Nils Daulaire, president and chief executive of the Global Health
Council, said he believed the group had lost the money because a
representative from Planned Parenthood was invited to the debate and a
representative of the United Nations Population Fund was the host of
another discussion. Both organizations support a variety of approaches
to sex education.
A spokeswoman for
A.I.D. said the agency had concerns because MoveOn.org, a political
group that opposed President Bush in the 2004 election, was set to
participate, which the agency saw as an increasingly partisan bent to
the conference.
Ms. Harben, the centers'
spokeswoman, said, ''The agenda submitted with the application
indicated some of the conference activities would support lobbying, and
the budget that was submitted was not able to show that federal funds
would not be used for lobbying activities.''
The latest groups to complain that a Congressional inquiry is really an
effort to punish them for opposition to Republican policy are the State
and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and its sister
group, the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials.
Three days after one of their officials went before the Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee and criticized the Clear Skies
Act of 2005 for being too lenient on power plant emissions, the groups
were asked by Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma and the
committee chairman, to supply several years of tax returns, lists of
contributors and other documentation.
The legislation, which President Bush supports, stalled on March 10
when the committee deadlocked on whether to send it to the full Senate.
Will Hart, a spokesman for the
committee, said no one had accused the organizations of wrongdoing. He
said the request for information was made as part of a formal review of
organizations that receive grants from the Environmental Protection
Agency after a critical G.A.O. report in 2003 that said the agency
needed better oversight of its grantees.
''Hindsight being 20/20, should we have included those questions
relating to the investigation with questions about the testimony on
Clear Skies? Probably not,'' he said. ''Then the perception of them
might have been different.''
S. William
Becker, the organizations' executive director of 24 years, says Senator
Inhofe's inquiries were an effort to intimidate his organizations and
silence their dissent. ''There is no way of sugar-coating it,'' Mr.
Becker said.