Washington Blade - December 23, 2008
Amy Cavanaugh

Mary Bahr, 54, has worked at the Clinic in various roles for more than 19 years, most recently as the director of administration.

Bruce Weiss, 41, the director of community health for two years, recently oversaw development of an ambitious new campaign to promote HIV testing.

Together, the three dedicated decades of their time to the Clinic. And together, the three lost their jobs last week when the Clinic cut dozens of positions and scaled back operations in the face of the recession.

With the layoffs coming amidst the holidays - and without a severance package to soften the blow - there's sadness and anger surrounding the elimination of long-time staff members, some of whom helped shape the Clinic into the community institution it is today.

"The staff at the Clinic are calling it the 'Christmas massacre,'" said Hawkins, the Clinic's associate executive director for policy and external affairs. "People are very upset, since a lot of us worked together for a long time."

Barbara Chinn, the 64-year-old director of the Max Robinson Center and 21-year veteran of the Clinic, said she had no idea the Clinic was in such dire financial straits.

"I knew it was difficult, but we had been told on several occasions after previous layoffs that things were OK and that we were on solid financial ground," she said. "So I'm not sure exactly what this was all about."

Chinn said she thinks it's "extremely unjust that they should let people go who have contributed in such a manner for so long with no financial consideration. We had been told that management would be treated as fairly as union employees and they are entitled to a severance package, but we aren't."

Bahr said the lack of a severance package is "an indication of just how closely income and expenses are watched at the Clinic."

Hawkins, Bahr, Chinn and Weiss are being paid through Dec. 31, although some of them have already stopped working.

'Very painful'

Hawkins said the Clinic has been through difficult times before, but it's "always tried to raise revenue."

"Senior management came up with possibilities [again this time] to increase revenue, but they were not put into play and I'm not sure why not," she said.

Hawkins said revenue could be increased by billing for costs associated with a Ryan White grant and getting more people into daytime treatment.

Hawkins, a psychologist, also offered to see clients in an effort to help generate revenue.

"There is a tremendous need for more LGBT-specific treatment, and we could increase that by having another treatment program, which would also generate dollars," she said. "Another option would be going after additional grants."

The Clinic's financial difficulties have been a problem for the organization for some time, though, and some longtime employees said they saw the layoffs coming.

"I had enough sense, having been an executive director in the past and looking at financials and seeing kind of an inevitability, and anything that wasn't actually directly critical in terms of providing health care was possibly going to be reduced or cut," said Weiss, a former executive director of Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League.

"I wasn't surprised by any of the things that happened, though it's still very painful."

Bahr also said she knew that layoffs were imminent.

"For myself, it did not come out of the blue, since I serve on the executive team, and I was aware of how tight everything was," she said. "The past 13 to 14 weeks have been solely spent working on getting us out of the 14th Street block and into a new facility. That was a huge job and basically all I did for three months."

A source close to the Clinic, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that some of the dismissed employees are considering filing an age discrimination lawsuit because a disproportionate number of older employees were included in the cutbacks. The source said earlier this week that employees had not yet consulted with lawyers.

Other sources close to the Clinic told the Blade that they feared that Whitman-Walker's openly gay employees were disproportionately affected by the cutbacks.

It was not immediately clear what criteria the Clinic used in choosing which employees to dismiss. Donald Blanchon, the Clinic's CEO, did not respond before deadline to the Blade's repeated requests for comment.

"A number of people let go are long-term employees of the Clinic and a number of us are older employees," Chinn said. "Longevity is expensive, and you have to realize that you have to pay for experience."

Bahr also said that amidst the layoff of lesbian senior staffers - herself, Chinn and Hawkins - she hoped "the board will make sure there are voices from the lesbian community there" even if they are not "as old and wise as us."

'There can only be so much cutting'

Despite the pain of being let go during the holidays, former staff members spoke favorably about the Clinic.

"I have only love for the Whitman-Walker Clinic," Weiss said. "I hope that it is able to survive these scary times and continue to do the work it does. It serves so many people, and the staff is dramatically smaller than it was when I started. It's probably half of what it was, yet the Clinic is serving double the amount of people."

In an interview earlier this week, Bahr also noted the increasing volume of patients.

"The services are getting better as the Clinic is focused on the medical model and serving more people than they ever have in the whole history of the organization," Bahr said. "It is critical that whoever is left there in administrative roles supports what the practitioners do and do very well."

But there is a delicate balance, Weiss said, between paring staff to stay afloat and maintaining a strong level of service.

"There can only be so much cutting of fluff," he said. "And they cut fluff previously, so now they're getting rid of managers. At some point you cut so deeply that it becomes difficult to function. I hope that's not what becomes of the Clinic, since they do such vital work. It would be frightening if it wasn't there anymore."

Unfulfilled dreams

Dismissed employees were optimistic this week about their professional futures. Bahr said that she planned to look to the federal government for opportunities.

"Hopefully with the new administration coming on there will be some opportunities," she said. "I definitely need to work and have never been in this situation before. I'm nowhere near retirement."

Weiss said that he is already negotiating to do contract work and grant writing for a non-profit.

Hawkins said she's luckier than some of her former colleagues in that she has Medicare benefits, but she isn't ready for retirement yet.

"I intend to start volunteering, since I don't want to stop HIV or LGBT work," she said. "I'll try to raise money for other programs. And I'm a psychologist and will see LGBT clients."

Chinn was less clear about her plans, though, and said that the layoff made her feel "like a dream has been zapped."

"I feel like I've not been able to fulfill my dream of bringing the Max Robinson Center to a full-service health care facility for the LGBT community," she said. "I want to continue in the health-care fight against HIV and AIDS. I'm committed to staying on the forefront of this war until we have resolved it."

ABilly S. Jones-Hennin, who serves on the Max Robinson Center's advisory board, bemoaned Chinn's exit and called the layoffs "sneaky."

"Within a week of the Washington Post doing an article about the move to the new [Clinic] building in which Pat Hawkins and Barbara Chinn made glowing comments about the Whitman-Walker Clinic - within the week, less than a week before Christmas, they get laid off," he said. "Where's the compassion here?"

Jones-Hennin, who is one of the board's 12 members, said the layoffs were made without regard to staff "relationships with the community and what they bring to the agency."

"They laid off the person who laid the foundation in the community for the Center to even exist and who has maintained and developed relationships with the community," he said. "The community does not know yet, but I'm sure they'll have concerns that Barbara is not there, and that she didn't retire but was laid off."

Jones-Hennin noted the cutbacks come during a difficult relationship between the board and Blanchon.

He said that Blanchon met with the advisory board and suggested that members should refer to themselves as a "committee" rather than a "board."

"It sounds like he was indicating that we needed to hear from him as to how our groups would even function, and it sounds like he wanted to get rid of us," he said. "At this point, the morale of members of the committee is such that some of them are saying, 'I'm not sure I want to continue working with the Max Robinson Center if I'm not sure what the what the leadership is going to be.'"

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