Washington Blade - November 23, 2001
Lou Chibbaro Jr.

In a Nov. 2 letter to Williams, GLAA President Bob Summersgill said the 29-year-old gay civil rights group spent nearly six months attempting to obtain records showing how the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration spent more than $50 million each year between 1999 and 2000 on local AIDS programs. Summersgill said GLAA filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents on May 22.

"We have no idea how they are spending that money," Summersgill said. Wanda Alston, Williams's special assistant for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Affairs, said she took steps to arrange for the HAA to release the documents shortly after she began work in her mayoral liaison post earlier this month. Alston said the HAA was expected to send the documents to GLAA late Wednesday, as city offices began closing for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Alston's intervention appeared to have ended at least one chapter in what local gay and AIDS activists have said has been an ongoing battle with the city to obtain information on how the city spends millions of dollars each year in local and federal funds for AIDS programs. Activists say problems in obtaining the information dates back to the 1980s and to the administrations of three previous mayors.

HAA Director Ronald Lewis said his office sent GLAA the information it requested on July 12, following an initial delay of about six weeks due to the inability of a newly hired deputy director to respond sooner. But Summersgill said the July 12 document, sent by an HAA attorney, contained a "completely unreadable" spreadsheet, making it impossible for GLAA to determine how the agency spent its funds.

In a telephone interview Nov. 20, Lewis said the HAA attorney, Thomas Collier, sent GLAA a corrected copy a few days later. Summersgill said the group never received it, despite GLAA's calls to the office seeking a new copy.

The two gay members of the D.C. Council, David Catania (R-At-Large) and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), said that while they are unfamiliar with the timing of HAA's response to GLAA's request, they have long encountered difficulty in obtaining similar information from the city's AIDS office.

Graham, the former director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, which has provided services to people with AIDS since the early 1980s, said that for years, Whitman-Walker was unable to obtain detailed spending figures on D.C. AIDS programs. Catania said he, too, has been seeking information on city AIDS spending, along with figures for other programs within the D.C. Department of Health, of which HAA is a part.

Local AIDS activists have said that, since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, the D.C. government, while strongly committed to addressing AIDS, has often failed to spend the funds allocated in its annual budget for AIDS programs. A sluggish bureaucracy and a poorly run city procurement office, AIDS activists have said, prevented the city from getting the money to community based organizations, such as Whitman-Walker, that provided services to people with AIDS.

Activists have credited Mayor Anthony Williams with significantly improving the procurement office's ability to release funds on a timely basis to city vendors, including AIDS service organizations.

Summersgill and Wayne Turner, a member of the AIDS group ACT UP/D.C., said they have no evidence to show the city is mismanaging its AIDS fund. But the two said the public has no way of assessing the effectiveness of the programs unless the city fully discloses how it is spending its money on such programs.

Lewis said the city's fiscal year 2002 AIDS budget comes to $58.531 million. Of that amount, $49.177 million comes from the federal government and $9.354 million comes from the D.C. government. Lewis said about 80 percent of the funds are allocated to about 30 vendors that provide services to people with HIV and AIDS. He said about 20 percent of the funds are used for programs administered directly by HAA.

Lewis said he was troubled that GLAA sent a letter earlier this month to D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams asserting that HAA was withholding public information. He said as far as he knows, his office responded quickly to GLAA's call saying the first document was incomplete.

INFO

GLAA P.O. Box 75265 Washington, DC 20013 202-667-5139 www.glaa.org HIV/AIDS Administration Department of Health 825 North Capitol Street, NE Washington, DC 20002 202-442-5999 dchealth.dc.gov

"If there was a problem in what they received, we will give them what they need," Lewis said. "They can save a lot of trees if they call instead of writing all those letters. I always answer my calls."

Summersgill said he did call Lewis' office and was transferred to HAA official Ivan Torres, who, according to Summersgill, promised to take care of the matter.

"We still haven't received the information," Summersgill said. "But I'm glad to hear Mr. Lewis will take my call. I will call him."

Meanwhile, Summersgill said Mayor Williams' office has yet to answer a letter GLAA sent the mayor on Nov. 2, asking for assistance in the group's dealings with HAA.

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