WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Offering both philosophical and tangible recommendations for the Obama administration, the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships marked its first year with a detailed report that highlights the complexities of trying to enable religious and community groups to provide government-funded programs.

As council member Anthony Picarello, general counsel of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, observed during his report on some of the recommendations for how the same-named office itself should run, the footnotes of the 160-page report tell the tale of the diverse council's deliberations.

The council is made up of people representing organizations that have long experience working together on public policy, such as Father Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, and Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

It also includes those who more typically might only encounter each other on opposite sides of a policy issue, such as Picarello and Harry Knox, director of the religion and faith program of the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights. Most members come from religious organizations, though a handful represent secular service providers such as Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

With a council made up of individuals accustomed to being the most important person in the room in their respective worlds, it's clear that when it came to some subjects, the first year's work in producing the report was, in fact, a great deal of work on finding areas of consensus.

Footnotes in the section on how the office operates cite court rulings on the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses of the First Amendment. They also quote from reports by various government agencies and the George W. Bush administration -- which established a faith-based office in the White House -- and detail which council members voted for and against various recommendations and, in some cases, why.

The report and its footnotes illustrate that the council members weren't shy about bringing their widely varied interests to the table as subcommittees and the full council deliberated the ins and outs of policies on: economic recovery and domestic poverty; environment and climate change; fatherhood and healthy families; global poverty and development; interreligious cooperation; and reform of the faith-based office.

For instance, the report notes that 16 of the council's 25 members agreed that the administration should neither require nor encourage the removal of religious symbols in locations that offer services funded by federal grants. This majority would encourage providers to be sensitive to and, when feasible, to accommodate at another location the objections of people who otherwise would receive services at religious institutions.

Seven other council members, representing the National Council of Churches, the Human Rights Campaign and Hindu, Jewish and Christian organizations would prefer to only allow federally funded programs to be operated in places with religious items on display if they could not be removed or covered up, or if space could not be made available in rooms devoid of religious items. Two council members, who represent the National Council of Jewish Women and the Arcus Foundation, which supports gay rights efforts, would have required federal grant recipients to provide services only in areas that have no religious imagery on display.

Ultimately, the recommendation from the council on this topic called for giving equal emphasis to two ideas in writing federal regulations and guidance: that when the government funds a program, "any explicitly religious activities offered by a provider must be privately funded, separate in time or location from the government-funded program and voluntary for beneficiaries"; and that providers that receive such federal funds may maintain their institutional religious identity in specified ways. Those ways include being able to "use religious terms in their organizational names, select board members on a religious basis and include religious references on mission statements and other organizational documents."

The disagreements about religious items on display where services are offered was explained in detail.

Beyond the details of how the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships should operate, the rest of the council's report -- and its footnotes -- reflected far less disagreement.

Some of its recommendations were broad and ideological, such as establishing ongoing communication between the White House and State Department and Muslim community groups, or helping "build social cohesion by supporting efforts to ensure that Americans have opportunities to understand America's increasingly diverse religious society."

Other recommendations got down to the nuts and bolts, such as the specific advice to temporarily suspend requirements for recipient organizations to provide matching funds in order to receive certain kinds of government grants for programs to combat poverty.

With the economic decline, nonprofit organizations have had to lay off thousands of employees and shut down entire programs, the report noted. At the same time, "nonprofit agencies have had to raise more and more unrestricted private dollars to meet match requirements, administrative fees and licensing and permit fees," the report said.

Temporarily ending requirements for matching funds might enable some services to continue when otherwise they might be discontinued because of funding shortages at the local level, it argued.

Federal programs also should include "prompt pay" requirements from the states to subcontractors, it said. Father Snyder highlighted this problem, noting that Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago is currently owed $26 million by the state of Illinois for services it has already delivered.

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The entire report can be viewed online at: www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ofbnp-council-final-report.pdf.

Copyright © 2010 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops