Aug 07, 2009  |  By: Lou Chibbaro Jr.  | COMMENTS     

Two gay D.C. City Council members said they joined their colleagues in voting to eliminate all non-competitive earmark grants for many non-profit organizations, including $1 million for four LGBT groups, because of a groundswell of opposition to earmarks.

The unanimous action July 31 by David Catania (I-At Large), Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) and other Council members came one week after Mayor Adrian Fenty proposed cutting the grants by 60 percent as part of a revised city budget aimed at reversing a projected $453 million shortfall in the current fiscal year and a projected $150 million deficit in 2010.

“I think the politics and the budget combined in a way that just made it a bad year for earmarks,” Graham said Monday.

But he said he was troubled over the loss of earmarked grants for the four LGBT groups: the D.C. Center; the Crystal Meth Working Group, which is a project of the Center; Transgender Health Empowerment, which provides services to transgender people; and the Mautner Project for lesbian health.

Graham said that in an effort to offset the Center’s loss of an expected earmark grant of $500,000 in 2010, he was looking into the possibility of the city providing the Center with a building, but could provide no additional details.

Center officials have discussed the possibility of asking the city to donate one of the many surplus buildings it no longer uses as a possible home for the Center.

“I’m trying to figure out — and I’m not there yet — but I’m trying to figure out some government property in an effort to address that need,” Graham said. “I have an idea, but it’s not quite settled yet.

Rather than accept Fenty’s proposal of a 60 percent cut, the Council voted to eliminate all earmarked grants for more than 100 organizations that expected to receive them. Council Chair Vincent Gray (D-At Large), who proposed ending the earmarks, cited longstanding concerns over the non-competitive process for approving them as well as the need to reduce city spending to balance the budget.

“It’s very disappointing,” said David Mariner, the Center’s executive director. “From what I understand, the Center is going to be getting absolutely no financial support from the city whatsoever. And I don’t know of any community center of the hundreds around the country that survive without any support from the place where they’re from.”

Under an earmark grant proposed earlier this year by Fenty, the Center was to receive $500,000 in 2010 to help it purchase a building that would enable it to move from its current, cramped offices on the second floor of an office building near Thomas Circle.

Fenty also had proposed a $150,000 grant in 2010 for the Crystal Meth Working Group, a highly acclaimed Center program that works to curtail crystal meth addiction within the LGBT community.

Other earmarked grants initiated by individual Council members for 2010 included $150,000 for Transgender Health Empowerment, which provides HIV prevention and social services for the transgender community, and separate grants of $150,000 and $60,000 for the Mautner Project, which provides health-related services for lesbian and bisexual women.

When Fenty proposed reducing each of those grants by 60 percent two weeks ago, officials with the groups responded by lobbying the Council to restore full funding. News this week that the Council was about to completely eliminate the grants came as a shock to the groups.

“This poses an extremely difficult situation for Mautner Project,” said Leslie Calman, the group’s executive director.

“This figure represents 20 percent of our typical annual budget,” Calman said of the lost funds. “Its loss will grievously impact our ability to serve the health needs of lesbian and bisexual women.”

Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance President Mitch Wood called the D.C. Center a “growing and vital part of the District community.” He said the D.C. Center had begun to flourish without the far greater financial support that other major U.S. cities provide for their LGBT community centers, but would face hardships if city funding was reduced or eliminated.

All told, the Council eliminated a combined total of nearly $21 million from more than 100 non-profit organizations in the city for fiscal year 2010 when it killed the earmarked grants, according Doxie McCoy, a Gray spokesperson. The Council ended the grants by unanimous voice vote as part of its approval of a fiscal year 2010 budget bill. The vote took place during the Council’s last legislative session before it adjourned for the summer.

McCoy said the action completed the Council’s work on the city budget and ended the possibility of making any changes ...