Wednesday, September 28, 2005

You Mean I Can't Buy Condoms with That?

Congratulations to Dr. Dora Mills, Director of Maine's Bureau of Health, and Governor John Baldacci for continuing to refuse federal abstinence-only "sex education" money. Their decision has brought the grand total of states that refuse to take such funds to a whopping three; Pennsylvania and California complete the trio.

Unfortunately, Dr. Mills (and future state funding for the Bureau of Health) are now under attack by conservative members of the state legislature:

"First of all, the bureau's director, Dr. Dora Mills, is not a policymaker or elected, like legislators, so I continue to object to policy being made by bureaucrats," [State Sen. Debra D.] Plowman said. "Second, I hope that she's going to find that $161,000 somewhere in her budget to continue the program she has been involved in, because we're not making it up. So she best not be asking for any increases in her budget next year, or the two years after that for that matter. If she can unilaterally turn away money, then she can't be in too difficult circumstances. She, and the governor, should have run that one by the Legislature."


Aside from the petty linguistic criticism of Plowman's contention that one can make a unilateral bureaucratic decision in conjunction with a state elected official (the Guv at that!), this quote is pure schoolyard battle drivel. "She best not be asking me for an Oreo after thumbing her nose at Mrs. Smith's Soft Batch chocolate chip cookie yesterday." What, is Debra Plowman 9 years old?

Of course, I'm anti-abstinence-only funding, so I'd agree with Mills's and Baldacci's decision regardless of the conservative response. But if I were a Maine resident and read Plowman's asinine threats, I'd be incensed that this woman was ever elected to the legislature. Mills wasn't overstepping her bounds as a bureau director by acting in conjunction with the Administration to refuse that funding. She was being smart and principled and demonstrating that not all state officials are out for more federal money to stuff their own coffers.

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