Baltimore Ex: 98 HIV+ People Lose Food Service, Executive Director & HRC Leader Not Cutting Pay

On the surface, this Baltimore Examiner story has absolutely nothing to do with the Human Rights Campaign. It's just another story about an HIV/AIDS service organization facing money troubles, and an executive director screaming the sky is falling for his clients, yet, the leader of Moveable Feast is not offering to cut his salary to make sure people with AIDS continue to receive hot food.

According to the latest IRS 990 for Moveable Feast, the executive director, one Mr. Vic Basile, received a total of $103,269 for his services in 2005. Hmmm, if he was making that sum two years ago, what is his current compensation package?

Here's where HRC comes in. Basile served as the organization's chief in the 1980s, he headed up the 2005 search committee that eventually found Joe Solmonese was the best person in America to run the nation's largest gay political force, and Basile presently sits on the HRC Foundation board of directors.

Hey Vic, instead of reducing the number of clients receiving meals, consider a reduction in your salary. What's more important: Keeping you in Guccis, or feeding people with AIDS?

From today's Baltimore Ex:

It could be the unkindest cut of all for those caught in the vicious cycle of sickness-induced poor appetite, physical weakness, isolation and meager means.

Reeling from a reallocation of federal Ryan White Treatment Modernization Act funds allotted the Baltimore area, Moveable Feast, a Baltimore nonprofit that prepares and delivers meals and groceries to area homeless and some 650 homebound sick, has cut delivery to 98 HIV/AIDS Baltimore City patients due to a diversion of $145,000 to other organizations.

“They took away half of our Ryan White funding for people in Baltimore City,” Moveable Feast Executive Director Vic Basile said of the March 1 development, which he said was imposed by the volunteer Greater Baltimore HIV Planning Council. “So we’re scrambling to try to find the money to [reinstate the recipients].”

Only about 50 of the organization’s total recipients — mostly women with breast cancer — are non-HIV/AIDS patients, Basile said. [...]

Basile noted that the $2.2 million per year nonprofit supports its non-HIV/AIDS clients with non-Ryan White funds, obtained from donations and events such as its fifth-annual “Ride for the Feast” charity bike ride, May 19 and 20. [...]

“The council only determines how much a service category gets, not what individual providers get,” countered Greater Baltimore HIV Planning Council Chairman Lennie Green, who said that other organizations actually determine provider allocations and assured him that no HIV/AIDS patients would be affected by a cut.

“The cut came about as a result of law.” [...]

Solmonese of HRC in SF on March 21; No Public Community Meeting Scheduled

Two little very reliable birdies have told me this nugget of news. HRC leader Joe Solmonese is coming to San Francisco on March 21, but he has no public community meetings on his schedule. He's coming to town to meet with big donors and board members.

The very fact that HRC's leader, and by extension one of the community's leading self-designation spokesperson, has not one public community event on his agenda for the one day he's in town smacks of elitism. Where is HRC's commitment and execution of open dialogue with the community, not just here, but everywhere they hold their dinner and in at their lavish headquarters?

For a organization that claims in an email to Andrew Sullivan that they are committed to transparency, it strikes me as odd Solmonese would travel to San Francisco and not hold a town hall meeting, say, at the gay community center. Just to tell the community what's happening with HRC and listen to our concerns, and provide transparency to the local gays.

Actually, today, March 9, marks two years since Solmonese took the helm at HRC, and frankly, not only can't I recall any significant thing he's accomplished in Washington, I know of no public meeting he's held in San Francisco during his tenure.

HRC has always enjoyed financial support from this city, and many local leaders have either served on the board or continue to do so today. The San Francisco HRC dinner is a highlight of the gay social season, and the group vacuums up much money to carpetbag back to Washington. But what does HRC do year round in San Francisco, to engage the local political activists?

It holds monthly cocktail parties. From HRC:

Throughout the year, HRC hosts and sponsors several events in your community to raise awareness in our community, attract a growing and diverse membership and help raise money to support HRC goals. Plus, we have a lot of fun! Check back often for upcoming events.

Oh, and what might some of the events be for 2007? Cocktail parties!

Please join us for the 3rd Thursday Event! HRC San Francisco cordially invites you and your friends to our Third Thursday Party at Lime, one of the Castro's coolest restaurant and lounge. Come and meet up with your friends or make new friends in this uber-chic space. HRC membership is not required to attend.

If you haven't looked lately at what HRC is doing in other local areas, click here and learn about upcoming activities, very many of which are centered around annual dinners, cocktail hours, and other socializing opportunities, like the May HRC bowling challenge in Boston.

Those Thursday night booze-fests, which don't sound to me like one can really get all that much serious political organizing done, are the only ways one can plug into HRC politically this year in San Francisco. Wait, there's also the "action center" where one can purchase the latest useless item with an HRC logo stamped on it. That's it.

Hey Joe. We've got a community center, you're facing plenty of criticism from the local print gay press and gay bloggers, you could afford to rent a room at the center, invite the community to a good old-fashioned New England-style town hall forum, and start to honesty address the problems facing HRC.

Joe, are you leader enough to recognize the need for you and HRC to organize a public community forum on March 21, while you're in San Francisco?

HRC, IGLHRC Release on State Department's Gay/HIV Citations in Human Rights Report

"_____________________________," said Joe Solmonese and Paula Ettelbrick, leaders of the Human Rights (sic) Campaign and the International Gay Lesbian Human Rights (sic) Commission, on the new annual human rights survey from the U.S. State Department and the inclusion of many gay and HIV citations.

What do we get from the HRC and IGLHRC and their million dollar budgets and nicely compensated staffs on the incredibly valuable State Department report for 2006? Silence.

Last year, under pressure from bloggers and activists, HRC and IGLHRC, on the day the 2005 report came out, were certainly aware of it, examined the survey, then geared up their respective p.r. machines to show the community how on-top of things they are. But this year, neither gay "human rights" organization can be bothered to call our attention to the new State Dept report.

I grieve for my community and how it doesn't demand consistent quality gay advocacy on crucial global gay rights abuses from our paid advocates.

HRC is supposed to be looking out for our concerns and moving gay laws forward in Congress, which they're failing at, and it should also be working with State and other federal agencies.

And of course IGLHRC is allegedly the USA-based group doing nothing but global gay rights works, which never seems to include developing contacts at State and promoting the Dept's resources on our brothers and sisters globally.

Two days ago I contacted both groups and asked what they'd be saying or doing about the State report.

HRC has sent me releases on how they found a video of Bob Hattoy's 1992 DNC speech and how they just got around to saying "thanks" to brave straight GOP pols in Wyoming.

And IGLHRC's spokesman for some reason think I wanted his group to comment on a State report on Iran. Hello IGLHRC? The report in question is about ALL nation's, not just Iran, but clearly IGLRHC is clueless about it and has no intention to read it.

These are the emails from HRC and IGLHRC in response to my request for their comments on the new State Dept report:

In a message dated 3/7/2007 2:57:37 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, Christopher.Johnson@hrc.org writes:

Good news: we were finally able to locate video for Bob Hattoy’s groundbreaking speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. There’s a link to the video and a special tribute to Bob at www.hrc.org. We also uploaded it to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUashmbh1zQ

Chris

________________________________________
Christopher Johnson | Director of Public Affairs
Human Rights Campaign
1640 Rhode Island Ave. NW |Washington, DC 20036
202.216.1580 ( | 202.716.1628 mobile

christopher.johnson@hrc.org | www.hrc.org

And this is the message from IGLHRC:

In a message dated 3/8/2007 8:33:58 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, halizadeh@iglhrc.org writes:

Dear Michael,

Thanks for your messages and sorry for not getting back to you earlier, since due to weather condition in New York, I was working from home yesterday and was not able to access my phone messages.

IGLHRC currently doesn't have any plan to issue a response to the State Department's report on Iran. If in the future we feel there is a need for a public statement on Iran, I will definitely email you our communications.

Warmest Regards

-----------------------------

Hossein Alizadeh

Communications Coordinator

International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission

80 Maiden Lane- Suite 1505

New York, NY 10038

USA

Phone: + 1 212-430-6016

Fax: + 1 212-430-6060

Email: halizadeh@iglhrc.org

Web: www.iglhrc.org

HRC's Two IRS 990 Files: $30.3M Revenue, Former-Executive Director Made $221,917

I recently examined the latest IRS 990 tax return for National Public Radio and found quite a few hefty salaries and contributions to benefits' plans, and this got me thinking about the most current IRS 990 for the Human Rights Campaign Inc and the affiliated Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

Here are some basic numbers from the FY 2005 IRS 990 reports for the two HRC nonprofits, based in Washington.

For HRC Inc, it reported $23.7 million in revenue, much of which must comes from their glamorous dinners, selling tschotkes on their web site and at their "action centers" in P-town and San Francisco.

What the gay community got in return for endowing HRC Inc with $23.7 in 2005 is open to question.

The IRS 990 for the HRC Foundation reveals revenue in 2005 of $6.6 million, with assets at the end of the year of $24.5 million. That's a nice chunk of change to have in the bank, wouldn't you agree?

Both HRC Inc and the Foundation show the group paid then-executive director Cheryl Jacques a salary of $221,917 for her services, and contributed $28,849 to her benefits package.

To my eyes, these sums are damn impressive. Too bad the same can't be said for about HRC supposed accomplishment with the gay community's money.

Of course, I wish the HRC leaders made their IRS 990 reports available on their own site, as does NPR.

But the last thing HRC wants is for the community to read their tax report, since the group is not committed to fiscal transparency.

Anyone know how much Joe Solmonese is making? His salary won't show up on an HRC IRS 990 for another year, but I think the community should know what he's earning right now.

But we all know that is asking too much of an organization that can't even throw an occasional bone to piss-poor bloggers who tirelessly work to find straight GOP state reps in places like Wyoming, who stand up for gay equality, and the day after they make great speeches for us, hearing from bloggers, who also run up long-distance phone bills to generate AP wire stories singing the praises of the GOP friends in the Equality State.

Almost two weeks ago Dan Zwonitzer and Pat Childers took great risk speaking and voting in favor of gay equality. Sure would be nice for the well-endowed HRC to send a thank you note to them and toss some bucks to bloggers.