AEGiS-BAYW: AIDS lobby day to request increased funding

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

AIDS lobby day to request increased funding

Bay Windows - March 24, 2005
Ethan Jacobs, ejacobs@baywindows.com.

On March 28 Project ABLE (AIDS Budget Legislative Effort) will host a lobby day at the Statehouse to demand increased HIV/AIDS funding in the state budget for fiscal year 2006 (FY06). The lobby day kicks off at 10 a.m. with speakers in Nurses Hall, including Sen. President Robert Travaglini (D- Cambridge), Rep. Liz Malia (D-Jamaica Plain), Rep. Marty Walsh (D-Dorchester), and Rep. Gloria Fox (D-Roxbury). At noon the attendees will begin lobbying their legislators.

Originally the lobby day was scheduled for March 1, but the threat of a snowstorm prompted Project ABLE to reschedule to ensure that attendees from Western Mass. could make it to the Statehouse. Mary Ann Hart, director of Project ABLE, said she expects to draw the same diverse crowd that they have had in previous years. In the past few years Hart said about 100 people turned out to lobby with Project ABLE at each lobbying day.

"We're hoping that the same group of people will come, and that would be a number of people in AIDS service organizations, and also the advocacy organizations and consumers," said Hart.

Project ABLE has two lobby items on their agenda. One is a $5 million increase in funding for the AIDS budget line item. According to Hart $3.1 million of that sum would offset the expected shortfall to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which provides HIV/AIDS drugs for people who cannot afford them. The remainder would support other programs that have been cut since the state budget crisis began in 2002.

The other item is to ask the Legislature to level fund the HIV MassHealth program, which funds medical services for people with HIV who cannot afford them, and to maintain eligibility for people at or below 200 percent of poverty.

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