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Staggering need, striking neglect (DC misuses millions in AIDS funding)
Washington Post ^ | October 19, 2009 | Debbie Cenziper

Posted on 10/19/2009 6:34:29 AM PDT by La Lydia

In a city ravaged by the highest rate of AIDS cases in the nation, the D.C. Health Department paid millions to nonprofit groups that delivered substandard services or failed to account for any work at all, even as sick people searched for care or died waiting. More than $1 million in AIDS money went to a housing group whose ailing boarders sometimes struggled without electricity, gas or food. A supervisor said she was ordered to create records for ghost employees. More than $500,000 was earmarked for a housing program whose executive director had a string of convictions for theft, drugs and forgery...the city terminated the grant but never sought repayment.

About $400,000 was paid to a nonprofit organization, launched by a man who once ran one of the District's largest cocaine rings, for a promised job-training center that has never opened.

All told, the Health Department's HIV/AIDS Administration awarded more than $25 million from 2004 to 2008 to nonprofit agencies marked by questionable spending, a lack of clients, or lapses in record-keeping and care, a 10-month Washington Post investigation found. Many of the groups have since closed or are no longer providing AIDS services...

Early on, the District focused on white gay men in more affluent areas. In recent years, however, city officials have pushed to support community-based groups in poorer neighborhoods...But the program morphed into something of a free-for-all among many nonprofit groups, enabled by a city agency that routinely gave out money but failed to ensure the funds were used to help people with the disease.

The waste has spanned every arm of the HIV/AIDS Administration... More than 20 failed to file tax returns or secure a city business license...

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Politics/Elections; US: District of Columbia
KEYWORDS: aids; corruption; funding
Life in Your Nation's Capital. Home rule, indeed. During the tenure of former HIV/AIDS Administration housing chief Debra Rowe, grant money flowed to her favorites even after her staff chronicled deficiencies. The executive director of one group -- awarded about $4.5 million in recent years -- had hired Rowe's son. The director also gave work to her father and uncle at a nightclub that he ran next door to his nonprofit group. Rowe, who drew $97,000 a year, has claimed she tried to close one organization and raised concerns about another but was overruled by her supervisors at the Health Department. Rotten from top to bottom.
1 posted on 10/19/2009 6:34:30 AM PDT by La Lydia
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To: La Lydia

Corruption in DC. Who knew?


2 posted on 10/19/2009 6:38:19 AM PDT by tgusa (Gun control: deep breath, sight alignment, squeeze the trigger ....)
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To: La Lydia
But the Stimulus Funds have been handled very responsibly ...

And government management of the health care industry will be flawless, squeezing out ever bit of waste, fraud, and abuse, and saving the taxpayers billions ...

How can people not see? Government is a system of organized crime. They aren't here to solve the problem. They are the problem.

3 posted on 10/19/2009 6:43:58 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (Play the Race Card -- lose the game.)
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To: ClearCase_guy

This story is just a preview of things to come in the wonderful country Congress and Obama have planned for us.


4 posted on 10/19/2009 6:51:23 AM PDT by La Lydia
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To: La Lydia

Sounds like when the ACORN like Obama people ,got their hands on the funds ,it was a free for all to gyp the Government.


5 posted on 10/19/2009 6:51:41 AM PDT by Venturer
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To: La Lydia

....when I comtemplate DC I think: “Escape from New York” meets “Blade Runner”


6 posted on 10/19/2009 6:52:33 AM PDT by STONEWALLS
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To: STONEWALLS

Large parts of it are like that, some parts aren’t. Colbert King has done a great job of chronicling the Blade Runner-Escape from New York parts, focusing on the vicious juveniles this city grows, and how it fails to deal with them.


7 posted on 10/19/2009 6:54:10 AM PDT by La Lydia
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To: La Lydia

Try living around WDC. It is a scandal a day. Remember the $6o million stolen in the “tax refund” office of the WDC government? Then Obama appointed the manager of the office as his IT Czar. My aching head!


8 posted on 10/19/2009 7:07:15 AM PDT by hal ogen
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To: La Lydia

bookmark


9 posted on 10/19/2009 7:07:50 AM PDT by fightinJAG (Mr. President: Why did you appoint a Communist to your Administration?)
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To: hal ogen

I do live around WDC.


10 posted on 10/19/2009 7:09:08 AM PDT by La Lydia
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To: La Lydia
People are homeless and starving across the nation and we continue to spend billions helping those who purposely infect themselves with AIDS.
11 posted on 10/19/2009 7:11:27 AM PDT by TexasFreeper2009 (Obama lied, the economy died)
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To: tgusa

I suspect that Federal giveaways of this same general type are equally wasteful and corrupt.


12 posted on 10/19/2009 7:25:19 AM PDT by BenLurkin (Brave amateurs....they do their part.)
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To: La Lydia

What a sewer. It almost seems as if some sort of shady past or prison time was a requirement. I have noticed that the left idolizes those who have gone bad and then rehabilitated far more than those who never took the crimninal or drug path in the first place. Committing a criminal offense is almost like an initiation rite of passage.


13 posted on 10/19/2009 7:54:16 AM PDT by Anima Mundi (The trouble with trouble is it starts out as Utopia)
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