With the demise of Positively Speaking (HYAP) — yet another San Diego AIDS organization to close its doors under a cloud of suspicion and allegations of fraud — it is bewildering that there has been so little outcry or apparent concern in the community since the story broke last week in the Gay and Lesbian Times.

For those unfamiliar with the events of the organization’s closure, its board of directors determined at an April 17 board meeting that the organization was “no longer a viable agency” and closed its doors with a net income deficit of approximately $115,000. This despite the fact that the organization last year received $124,614 of a $289,347 three-year grant from the California Endowment, as well as $25,000 in San Diego Community Development Block Grant funding and other various donations and contributions.

After some 45 personal expenses were discovered on the organization’s credit card at a March 20 board meeting — “apparently personal expenses made by the executive director, David Blair” — the organization was forced to close its doors.

Positively Speaking board member John Taylor informed the board last year of apparent abuses to the organization’s credit card, which were discovered during an outside audit. According to the organization’s board meeting minutes, the action it took was incredibly forgiving — they voted to increase Blair’s salary (already over $50,000 a year) by $1,500, “so that there would be no further personal expenses paid for by the organization.”

Board meeting minutes from March 20 state that personal expenses incurred by Blair had not been paid back to the organization and that Blair “did not know exactly how much money he owed the agency” (this despite the fact that his attorney last week told the Times that there was “complete disclosure” of Blair’s spending).

Asked if his substantial salary shouldn’t have prevented Blair from having to charge personal items to the organization — such as a trip to Vietnam during which he conducted business for his home décor shop in Hillcrest — Blair said, “I disagree. Really, what I may have charged was a meal here or there.” Blair admitted to charging the Vietnam trip and another to Spain to Positively Speaking as “an educational expense.”

In a last ditch effort to make up for the organization’s deficit, Blair apparently requested additional funding from both the city and county of San Diego.

According to Darren Pudgil of County Supervisor Ron Roberts’ office and Terry Cunningham, Chief of the Office of AIDS Coordination for San Diego County, a request for $54,000 from the county in March or April was approved, then suddenly terminated. According to the board’s meeting minutes, board member Stephen Carroll said that a “reimbursement claim submitted [by Blair] to the County might appear to be fraudulent,” due to a “discrepancy between the actual and reported date of certification of 17 peer educators” (meaning the claim would have been for reimbursement of certification that had already been funded and completed).

Former Program Manager Christopher LaFlamme also alleged last week that the organization’s Multi-Cultural Initiative (MCI) program, “targeting multi-ethnic, underserved, disproportionately affected youth” was basically nonexistent. “What he would do is he’d take the numbers from our peer education program and our Positively Speaking program and he would partner those programs up and call it the MCI program — even though it was just two other programs.”

Ernie Linares, deputy director of community services for the city of San Diego, told the Times Positively Speaking had also applied for $57,645 from the city around this time, under the category of “youth.” A $25,000 grant the organization received last year was based on a score of 93.2 they received from a five-member scoring panel, said Linaris. However, this year their request was only given a score of 76 and the funds were denied.

Reviewing some of the panel’s comments, Linaris attributed the rejection to things such as a “lack of clarity, not a high level of low income people served [and] some issues with tracking.”

Meanwhile, the Times has learned that The Center’s Speaker’s Bureau had the training and ability to offer the same services as Positively Speaking — and likely for a lot less money. However, to avoid an overlap of services in the community, The Center said it would send any request for HIV-positive speakers to Positively Speaking.

After having lived through the fraudulent activities that led to the demise of the San Diego AIDS Foundation and the troubles with AIDS Walk San Diego two years ago (which, according to board member accounts at the time, parallel current events leading to Positively Speaking’s demise), our community should be outraged that this behavior seems to have again surfaced in a local AIDS organization. We must all raise our voices and demand accountability of the organizations that were founded to serve our community. Otherwise, we leave ourselves open to scrutiny and attack from conservative lawmakers looking for any reason to deride GLBT and HIV/AIDS funding.

Case in point: some four months ago, complaints by conservative Indiana Rep. Mark Souder led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to review HIV/AIDS workshops in San Francisco that Souder deemed as “promoting sexuality.” Though San Francisco’s Stop AIDS workshop passed CDC inspection at the time, it is again under fire for being too risqué (see page 28).

Though there is no one specific way in which to best reach gay and bisexual men with HIV prevention messages and deal with the complex topic of human sexuality, certainly one has to call into question the hands-off, holistic approach to this year’s Gay Men’s Health Summit in Raleigh, North Carolina. Among such lectures on serious matters like the spread of syphilis, drug use and HIV co-infection, speakers addressed such crucial issues as “Building Better Bears: Healthy Bears through Better Community,” “Chi Kung Wakeup Exercises and Self-Pleasuring at Sunrise,” “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and-Doggone It-People Like Me: A Gay Man’s Guide to Improving Self-Esteem,” and “Homeland Security, Militarism, and War: Implications for Queer Men.”

Though overly moralistic in tone, a recent cover story appearing in Seattle’s The Stranger titled “The Immoral Minority” raised some valid questions about the seeming excesses of this conference and AIDS funding overall. At one point during the health summit, the author said he was even witness to an onstage demonstration of proper rimming techniques.

Phoning a Seattle based HIV/AIDS hotline, the author documented a striking reluctance of counselors to offer any sort of safe sex advice at all. Asked if it were okay to bareback without using condoms, one counselor replied, “That’s a question I’m not able to answer for you. I think it’s a question only you can answer for yourself.”

Pressed if it was okay not to tell people he’s sleeping with that he is HIV positive, the counselor further stated, “Determining what level of risk you’re willing to take for yourself or for your partner is something you have to determine for yourself. It’s not a question I can answer for you.”

While it is understandable to take into account the fact that gay men have been stigmatized by society, the hands-off, frisky and feel good climate of many HIV/AIDS organizations at present is a bit dismaying, to say the least. It’s also indicative of the environment in which these organizations continue to receive staggering amounts of grant money with very few questions asked of them.

We’ve already seen significant cuts to HIV/AIDS funding over the years. If we are not willing to police our own organizations and ask the tough questions, others from outside our community will be more than willing to do the job for us. And we’re not likely to be happy with the outcome.