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Mayor Adrian Fenty’s budget released last week calls for increasing the city’s share of funding for the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration from $14.7 million to $16.4 million. (Blade photo by Joey DiGuglielmo)
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HOME > NEWS > LOCAL
By: LOU CHIBBARO J COMMENTS
 
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executive director of Us Helping Us, a local group that provides services to black gay men with HIV, said he had yet to see the budget but was puzzled over why the document would be drafted in a way that showed cuts in HIV prevention services.
“Given the serious state the city is in in terms of HIV, it does sound crazy if they are reducing it,” he said in referring to prevention programs.
Patricia Hawkins, deputy director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, the city’s largest private medical facility providing AIDS-related services, said she, too, had yet to examine the details of the proposed AIDS budget. Hawkins said Whitman-Walker and other community-based AIDS groups usually defer to D.C. Councilmember David Catania (I-At-Large), who chairs the Council’s Committee on Health, on AIDS budget matters.
Catania, who is gay, has played a leading role in uncovering problems with HAA’s management and ability to carry out its mission under the administration of former Mayor Anthony Williams. In committee hearings, Catania has sometimes raised eyebrows by his sharp and blunt questioning of HAA officials.
Ben Young, a Catania spokesperson, said Catania was studying the Fenty AIDS budget and would not comment on the document until he holds a public hearing on the budget in late April.
“He will go through the budget with a fine-tooth comb,” Young said.
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