June 2005

News In the States

Alabama: Lawyers representing 240 HIV-positive state prison inmates have filed a motion to have the Alabama Department of Corrections held in contempt of court for violating a settlement signed in April 2004 that required the Department to provide better medical care in prisons. A report on the deaths of 38 HIV-positive inmates between 1999 and 2002 had concluded that the medical care was substandard. The Department has asked that the motion be dismissed.

California: San Francisco city funding for four nonprofits that work to prevent the spread of HIV among Hispanics are likely to be cut by nearly $1 million for fiscal year 2005-2006. Concepcion Saucedo, executive director of Instituto Familiar de la Raza, which faces a 12% reduction in its $4 million annual budget, said the selection process for HIV/AIDS funding was “skewed” toward organizations that paid for professional grant writers and did not take into account the successful track records of the four groups and their history of building trust in the Hispanic community. “It creates a scenario for more death,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Minnesota: The Minnesota House in April passed a budget bill that, if passed by the legislature, would eliminate $425,000 in funding for the Minnesota AIDS Project (MAP), the largest prevention program in the state because state Rep. Tom Emmer objected to sexually explicit images and language on the MAP-sponsored PrideAlive Web site, which provides health information for men who have sex with men. The PrideAlive program, ironically, is privately funded. Minnesotas’s Health Conference Committee has been working on a final draft of the Health Omnibus bill. Currently, the House version contains an attack on effective HIV prevention for all Minnesota organizations that provide prevention education by prohibiting prevention grantees from producing “Web sites, pamphlets, or other communications that contain sexually explicit images or language.” The House has targeted MAP specifically by adding the following language, “the Minnesota AIDS Project is not eligible for any grants from the commissioner of health or the Department of Health”. The Senate version of the Health omnibus bill does not include those provisions. MAP advocates are working to persuade the Health Conference Committee members to exclude language that attacks not only MAP but all Minnesota organizations that provide effective HIV prevention. For further information about the Minnesota AIDS Project visit www.mnaidsproject.org