In 2006, Indiana's Family and Social Services Administration hired Rev. Michael Latham, a Baptist minister from Fort Wayne, to create and administer a network of volunteer clergy. Their job would be to help the agency's workers deal with job stress, but defenders of church/state separation saw this as an unconstitutional privileging of religion generally and Christian clergy in particular. They challenged this new program and though no courts have ruled on the matter, the state has decided to drop the program — for now, at least.

The program's slow start occurred while Latham was allowed to work from his home in Fort Wayne, where he continued holding down two jobs -- as the pastor of Renaissance Baptist Church and in an unpaid post as president of the Allen County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Latham's qualifications for the job came under scrutiny when he was made the highest-paid chaplain in the state despite lacking the basic educational credentials to serve in the state's psychiatric hospitals or prisons. Those chaplain jobs require a bachelor's and a master's degree. Latham had neither.

Some pointed to Latham's political ties. In 2004, he campaigned for Republican Mitch Daniels in his successful run for governor -- a rarity for NAACP presidents, who are often allied with Democrats.

FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob, who created the program, was unavailable for comment Wednesday. His spokesman, Marcus Barlow, said the program "hadn't lived up to our goals."

Source: Indianapolis Star

The state was apparently quite dissatisfied with how the program has been going. Although 115 clergy had gone through training under Latham, only 21 became qualified — a pretty dismal record for 17 months of work. Latham himself had been sick for a while and is now on disability, something that will cost Indiana taxpayers despite the fact that he doesn't seem to have actually done anything substantive for them:

Due to his illness, Latham was officially granted short-term disability status Aug. 9 -- more than a week after the decision to terminate his program, Barlow said. But the outside company that handles the disability program made Latham's disability status retroactive to July 30.

Durnil said federal law prohibits FSSA from firing employees on disability.

This all strikes me as awfully suspicious. Michael Latham was hired to do something that the government shouldn't have ben sponsoring in the first place and which he doesn't appear to have been qualified for anyway. Then, before legal challenges can be brought Latham goes on disability. Latham continues to get paid despite not having done anything for the government, but the program is gone so it will be hard for any legal challenges to be made. That's a pretty convenient series of events, isn't it?