Money woes

With all of their programs being either level funded or receiving only a slight increase the House Ways Means proposed Fiscal Year 2009 (FY09) budget, LGBT and HIV/AIDS advocates scrambled last week to file amendments to get more funding for LGBT youth programs, domestic violence programs, elder services and HIV/AIDS services.

It is unclear whether those amendments will pass when the House begins debating the budget the week of April 28. With state revenues down, Ways and Means made more than $100 million in cuts to the FY09 budget and advocates expect that it will be an uphill battle to squeeze any more money out of the House.

Advocates lowered their requests for HIV/AIDS and LGBT youth programs. Mary Ann Hart, lobbyist for Project ABLE (AIDS Budget Legislative Effort), the lobbying arm of a coalition of state HIV/AIDS groups, said that while they originally requested an additional $6 million in the state AIDS budget line item, state Rep. Carl Sciortino (D-Somerville) filed an amendment this week asking for an increase of only $2 million. That new funding would be focused primarily on overcoming HIV/AIDS-related health disparities in communities of color, but Hart said it would also focus on other communities hit hard by the epidemic, including the gay male community.

Yet despite lowering their request, Hart said advocates are unsure whether they will be able to get the extra funding.

"Even some people that we have spoken to have trouble with two million, feeling like even that's a high number. ... I think it's probably going to be the hardest year to get an increase in funding since probably 2003, which is when we had some very big budget cuts," said Hart.

Advocates also lowered their request for LGBT youth funding. Currently LGBT youth programs receive about $550,000 in state funding, but advocates pushed for an increase to bring that amount up to $2.9 million. Bill Conley, lobbyist for the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, said that Sciortino filed an amendment to instead bring the youth budget up to $1.6 million, which was the previous high watermark for state youth funding.

Eleni Carr, chair of the government relations committee of the Massachusetts Commission on GLBT Youth, said that the commission initially asked for $2.9 million because it felt that would be sufficient to begin addressing the broad range of issues facing LGBT youth. Commissioners arrived at the figure by deciding what programs and services were essential to making progress on LGBT youth issues and estimating what they would cost. While Carr said that the state Department of Public Health (DPH) and other state agencies would ultimately decide how to spend LGBT youth funding, the commission's $2.9 million request recommended spending $400,000 to create a homeless shelter serving LGBT youth, $500,000 to support gay/straight alliances (GSAs) across the state, and $800,000 to support community-based groups such as the Alliances for Gay and Lesbian Youth (AGLYs).

Carr said the commission scaled down its request in recognition of the tight budget year, and she said commissioners felt that $1.6 million would help rebuild the infrastructure that existed before former Govs. Jane Swift and Mitt Romney made major cuts to funding for state LGBT youth programs.

"I think what we're trying to do is, we're a new commission, so we're really trying to make relationships with this legislature and be able to work with them and try to go for something that feels realistic, that helps us restore the infrastructure we once had," said Carr. The commission, which replaced the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, launched in 2006.

Carr said the commission made the case for LGBT youth programming to the architect of the Ways and Means budget, committee chairman Robert DeLeo (D-Winthrop), on April 15, the day before the committee released its budget proposal. She said there was little discussion of numbers, apart from DeLeo's warning that the budget was likely to be tight, but she said DeLeo asked Carr and other commissioners who attended the meeting to explain the issues facing LGBT youth. Commissioners showed DeLeo statistics about the health and safety risks facing LGBT youth and talked about the stories of harassment and violence that youth have told them during the commission's meetings across the state.

"I think that the spirit of the meeting and the way he set the tone for this was really, let me know what's going on, because I don't know a lot about this issue. ... We felt optimistic, I would say, that he was so open to learning more about the issue and recognizing it as an important issue," said Carr.

Conley said Rep. Liz Malia (D-Boston) filed two more amendments, one to beef up funding for LGBT domestic violence resources from $250,000 to $658,000 and another to double the funding for the LGBT Aging Project, bringing its total budget up to $120,000. He said advocates are spending this week urging lawmakers to sign on as cosponsors for these amendments, and next week the House will begin debating the budget.

Conley also warned that anti-gay activist Brian Camenker and his group MassResistance are canvassing the Statehouse for someone to sponsor an amendment to the budget that would strip out all LGBT youth funding.

"I think it's unlikely that he'll find someone who is so anti-gay and so unsympathetic to the difficulties faced by LGBT youth in today's schools, that he'll find a sponsor. But if he does, it's a battle we're prepared for, and we can predict with some confidence that such an amendment would not pass," said Conley.

But he said it remains to be seen whether advocates will be able to convince the House to expand LGBT funding beyond the amount allotted by Ways and Means.

"We're certainly marshalling our legislators and the community to show as much support as we possibly can for these amendments and their sponsors," said Conley. "I think we're going to make a very good case for them. A lot of it will depend on whether the legislature can find the money for our best causes."