Oct 23, 2009  |  By: Lou Chibbaro Jr.  | COMMENTS     

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty announced Monday that Attorney General Peter Nickles has opened an investigation following reports of widespread misspending of city funds by a number of local AIDS organizations that were responsible for helping low-income people with HIV and AIDS.

The announcement came after the Washington Post published a two-part expose, based on the paper’s 10 month investigation, revealing the city paid more than $25 million in recent years to several non-profit AIDS groups that could not adequately account for how they used the funds.

According to the Post report, the FBI had been investigating some of these groups and city inspectors could not confirm that some of the groups were providing any services in exchange for the grant money they received from the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration, the lead city agency overseeing the funding.

The Post report showed that many of the problems associated with the groups in question occurred before Fenty took office in January 2007 and before he hired Dr. Shannon Hader to take over the HIV/AIDS Administration.

Hader has been credited with shaking up the agency and firing at least one official in charge of AIDS-related housing programs that the Post report cited as being at the center of an investigation by the FBI.

However, the Post report pointed to some local AIDS groups whose use of city funds has come under question, including the AIDS housing organization Miracle Hands, that continue to receive city funding under the Fenty administration.

“This administration will not tolerate any kind of waste, fraud or abuse of government resources, particularly the resources that are intended for our more vulnerable populations,” Fenty said Monday.

He said the city’s AIDS office “has taken important steps over the past two years to ensure the accountability of public funding to provide services and will continue to improve the way we serve our residents living with HIV and AIDS.”

In its own past investigation into allegations of alleged misuse of city funds by some local AIDS groups, the Blade has found that officials with other groups — whose credibility and use of city funds have not come under question — were reluctant to speak out publicly about problem organizations out of fear of offending city officials who controlled their own funding sources.

Earlier this year, the Fenty administration cut funding for at least two LGBT organizations that directly or indirectly provided HIV prevention services. Transgender Health Empowerment, which provides services to transgender people, and the D.C. LGBT community center’s Crystal Meth Project, each received significant funding cuts, which the mayor’s office attributed to an across-the-board city budget reduction made necessary by a city revenue shortfall.

The Mautner Project for lesbians also had its city funding reduced due to city budget cuts.

Some local activists have expressed concern that the Post investigation shows that several AIDS groups whose finances and ability to provide services are under question continue to receive city funding, while other groups, such as the Mautner Project, are having their funds reduced or eliminated, even though their work has been praised by their clients and they are free from any allegations of financial mismanagement.

In a related development, HAA spokesperson Michael Kharfen said Department of Health officials changed his agency’s name within the past month from HIV/AIDS Administration to HIV/AIDS Hepatitis STD & Tuberculosis Administration.

He said the change reflects a trend in city and state public health agencies across the country to combine HIV-related services with services addressing all sexually transmitted diseases, including Hepatitis, as well as tuberculosis.

Local AIDS activist Raymond Blanks, who monitors city funding of community-based AIDS groups, said he is concerned that the merger of other disease prevention and treatment programs with the city’s AIDS office might be premature.

“Why give an agency already in trouble more responsibilities before it gets its own house in order?” Blanks said.