Emergency Funding for AIDS Loses

A San Diego City Council committee Wednesday rejected three council members’ bid for a $250,000 emergency contribution to groups that assist AIDS victims, handing Mayor Maureen O’Connor a major victory in a bitter dispute over city spending.

The council’s Public Services and Safety Committee voted 3-2 not to bring the emergency request before the full council, and decided instead to consider increased funding for the groups during the council’s annual budget deliberations in May.

Advocates for AIDS victims, who for a second consecutive month delivered impassioned requests for the emergency aid, were left bitter and disappointed as the two-month struggle for the funds appeared to be all but over.

“I am very, very tired of all the (fighting),” said Terry Cunningham, executive director of the AIDS Assistance Fund, which provides food and shelter to AIDS victims. “The crisis is here in San Diego. It’s here now. We’re doing everything on the front lines to take care of people with AIDS.”

Deference to O’Connor

Councilman Ed Struiksma, who has led the trio of members requesting the emergency funding, said he is studying a parliamentary method of bringing the issue before the full council within the next 10 days.

But he acknowledged that the committee turned down the request in deference to O’Connor. The mayor has said repeatedly that AIDS groups are not entitled to a midyear funding increase and should have their claim considered along with every other group during the next budget review.

On a related issue, the committee voted to adopt an ordinance banning sexual activity in gay-oriented bathhouses, a move urged by the county Board of Supervisors when it approved an identical measure in the form of health regulations last month. All five existing bathhouses in the county are within the city.

The supervisors encouraged San Diego and other cities to write their own ordinances because county lawyers believe courts would place greater weight on local ordinances than on health regulations.

The proposed ordinance, which will be brought to the council in two weeks, would allow the closure as a “public nuisance” of any bathhouse or other business where patrons engage in sexual activity.

County Also Challenged

On the funding issue, Struiksma and Councilmen Wes Pratt and Bob Filner urged the council Jan. 13 to add $750,000 to the budgets of AIDS human services agencies, $250,000 of it immediately. The three also challenged the county to match the contribution.

The city in October gave $160,000 to three AIDS assistance groups: the San Diego AIDS Project, the AIDS Assistance Fund and the Center for Social Services Inc. Last week, the San Diego Housing Commission voted to open a residence for AIDS victims.

The emergency request was transferred from the Public Services and Safety Committee to the Rules, Legislation and Intergovernmental Relations Committee Jan. 29, but when 50 people showed up for a rules committee discussion Feb. 3, it was referred back to its original committee. Struiksma and AIDS victims’ advocates charged then that O’Connor was “playing politics” with the AIDS funding issue.

Wednesday, Struiksma and Filner were surprised to find that the request was not addressed in a city manager’s office report on AIDS funding for fiscal 1989. But Pratt, who sits on the Public Services and Safety Committee, managed to bring it to a vote after hours of debate.

Only Councilwoman Judy McCarty supported Pratt’s attempt to bring the matter before the council, even when he proposed doing it without a committee recommendation on the issue.

Council members Gloria McColl, Bruce Henderson and Ron Roberts insisted that AIDS funding be reviewed as part of budgetary deliberations, after city and county officials meet to pinpoint which assistance programs would benefit most from the spending.

After Pratt’s motion was defeated, McCarty joined those three to refer the matter to city and county staff for consideration.

“The need is demonstrated,” Roberts said. “The response is what’s missing, and the effectiveness of the response.” Voting to spend money without knowing which programs would benefit most “is the part that flies in the face of responsible government,” he said.

In an interview, O’Connor said that to give special consideration to AIDS groups would not be fair to the dozens of organizations that received no funding during last year’s budget deliberations.

“We have a lot of constituencies,” she said. “We represent 1 million people.”

The two votes followed emotional speeches painting a portrait of dire need for housing, food, transportation and legal help for AIDS victims, and accusations that the council is ignoring their growing numbers.

“It looks like the city is operating with its head in the sand,” said speaker Dwight Smith. “It is operating the way the federal government did five years ago. It is operating on the assumption that the problem is going to go away.”

Dr. J. William Cox, director of the county’s Department of Health Services, said the county is spending $3.3 million on AIDS services this year and that he could identify an additional $2.5 million in unmet needs “tomorrow.”

“It’s not that we’re not acting,” Supervisor Susan Golding told the committee. “It is that we just don’t have the resources to do everything that needs to be done.”

Cunningham, of the AIDS Assistance Fund, told the committee his group is spending $10,000 a month on its food bank alone and that requests for food are increasing by $1,000 a month. The organization, which received a $70,000 donation from the city last year, has raised $500,000 on its own, but believes private fund raising cannot meet its growing needs, he said.

But O’Connor’s chief of staff, Ben Dillingham, challenged any of the groups to prove their claim that the city is in the grip of an “emergency.”