Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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San Francisco Examiner - June 2, 2005
Jo Stanley, jstanley@examiner.com
The confrontation arose when a huge discrepancy in the Public Health's Department budget for AIDS funding was questioned by Supervisor Chris Daly. Amid confusion and strong words from supervisors over what committee Chair Tom Ammiano described as a "volatile issue, the mayor's budget chief Ben Rosenfield tried to explain how the remaining $12 million could be blamed on declining federal grants as Daly walked out.
Rosenfield said later he'd discovered that much of the problem came about because a key listing for the current year's spending, $71 million, was overstated by at least $5 million. "It's a mistake," he said, adding that accountants at the Department of Public Health would be working overtime to clean up their numbers.
Gregg Fass, chief financial officer at the Health Department, agreed that trying to keep up with grant totals that change every month probably led to the error. "New grants come in all year long, so the budget is constantly changing. We try to make it as accurate as possible on July 1, but that didn't happen for fiscal year 2004-05."
At the end of the day, the mayor's spokesman Peter Ragone stated that his boss also wants to reverse the latest $1.5 million in cuts to an employment program as well as prevention and emotional support services. "We believe these cuts will be restored," Ragone said.
No one is disputing that overall AIDS funding has dropped by $9 million in the past two years, even though 1,000 new cases are emerging annually, according to health statistics. Millions have been cut from San Francisco's funding through the federal Ryan White Care Act, and Daly pointed out that a portion of the $1.7 million supervisors restored last summer has gone unspent because of the mayor's midyear budget cuts.
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