San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, August 17, 2000
Chronicle Staff Report

Hansen is expected to resign at the end of this week after six years as public policy director for the AIDS Legal Referral Panel to devote more time to her candidacy in November's district elections. She hopes to represent District 8, a seat also sought by Supervisor Mark Leno -- an ally of Mayor Willie Brown. Hansen is backed by Brown rival Tom Ammiano, for whom Hansen has worked as an unpaid campaign strategist.

In a heated exchange of news releases and e-mails, Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., declared that the AIDS Legal Referral Panel has "clearly violated federal" law by allegedly using taxpayer funds for lobbying purposes.

Coburn, a conservative doctor from Muskogee, Okla., demanded that Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala investigate the finances of the group, which receives $200,000 a year from the Ryan White CARE Act, the federal program that allocates AIDS grants to local agencies throughout the nation. In an August 10 letter to Shalala, Coburn requested that Shalala ask for a refund of the Ryan White money the group has received "so that this money can be spent on patient care as it was intended."

Hansen said yesterday the AIDS Legal Referral Panel public policy program is paid for entirely through private grants -- as it has been for years. "I'm not aware of any organization that does public policy work that would use Ryan White dollars for it. It's a basic principle, and we are all very aware of it," she said.

Hansen said her organization has offered to show Coburn its books. "He's welcome to audit us," she said. "We can show him expenses and income statements. Everything is clear and clean."

The flap is a product of a political disagreement, Hansen said, between Coburn and her organization over the Ryan White CARE Act, which is up for a five-year reauthorization in Congress. San Francisco stands to lose as much as 25 percent of the $35 million it receives annually in Ryan White funding because of changes in the formula for allocating AIDS dollars during the next five years.

A physician who has treated AIDS patients, Coburn has said San Francisco receives twice as much federal money per individual AIDS case as other cities where the rate of HIV infection is rising faster, particularly among minorities and women. Coburn is playing a leading role in shaping the reauthorization, which has passed both houses of Congress and is under consideration by a conference committee next month.

Coburn and the AIDS Legal Referral Panel are at odds, as they were five years ago, on a key provision calling for financial incentives for states that require pregnant women and their babies to receive HIV testing. Coburn strongly favors the provision, while Hansen is a leading opponent of it.

The dispute appears to have become personal after Hansen issued a news release on August 7 "denouncing" the testing provision Coburn successfully inserted into the House bill. "Mandatory testing of any individual or population is unnecessary, inappropriate and is not in the best interest of serving the public health," she wrote.

"Because he disagreed with our stand, he is threatening us with loss of our dollars," Hansen said yesterday.

Michael Petrelis, a San Francisco activist who has been working with Coburn since 1997 on what he calls "accountability issues," said he called the congressman shortly after Hansen issued her news release. "How is she able to take $200,000 and then lobby on that bill?" he asked.

Petrelis acknowledged that he has "no information" that Hansen was using Ryan White money for her campaign for supervisor.

AIDS Legal Referral Panel Executive Director Bill Hirsh said Hansen's resignation has nothing to do with the dispute -- and, in fact, had been planned long before Coburn raised his concerns over how the group spends its money.
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