ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) – Maryland should establish a public registry of Marylanders who are infected with AIDS to help stop the spread of the deadly virus, Comptroller William Donald Schaefer has said.

“People should know if they are around people with AIDS,” Schaefer said in an interview.

“I feel it’s absolutely necessary that a registry be set up,” he said. “The other methods of prevention aren’t working. It [AIDS] is an epidemic in Africa and it’s an epidemic here.”

The comptroller said he is not being critical of people who have the disease.

“I feel very sorry for them. They are going to die,” Schaefer said. “This isn’t against any particular group of people.”

The comptroller, who proposed a similar registry when he was governor, raised the issue at a meeting of the state Board of Public Works.

A coalition of groups working with people infected with the virus condemned the comments as “discriminatory, insensitive and damaging” to people who have developed AIDS.

Naomi Tomoyasu, acting director of the state AIDS administration, said state law and the federal Centers for Disease Control prohibit release of names of people tested for the AIDS virus.

Joe Berg, communications director for Moveable Feast, an organization that helps feed AIDS patients, said a registry “would open the door to discrimination against people with this disease.”

It would also discourage people from being tested for fear they would be exposed as someone with the virus, Berg said.

“The best way to fight AIDS is to have people get tested,” he said. Fear of public exposure would work to increase the prevalence of AIDS and “undo 25 years of very hard work,” Berg said.

Schaefer did not accept the argument that a registry would keep people from getting tested. “When you get sick, and you are really sick, you seek treatment,” he said.

Isiah Leggett, chair of the state Democratic Party, said he is not worried about damage to the party from his fellow Democrat’s comments because “most people look at him as pretty independent.”

“I am concerned that it is a statement that I think is quite insensitive,” he said.

“I would hope he would retract the statements,” Leggett said.

But another Democratic leader, Del. John Adams Hurson, who is chair of the Health and Government Operations Committee, called for the comptroller to resign.

Describing Schaefer’s comments on AIDS as “the last straw,” Hurson told Baltimore’s The Sun “It demonstrates not just his lack of sensitivity on this subject, but the fact that, unfortunately, he has a string of statements that he has made that have indicated that maybe he is just not fit for the job.”

In the face of such criticism, Schaefer maintains he is just saying what a lot of people believe but are afraid to say.

“People think I have some ulterior motive. I don’t. Millions are dying,” he said. “Kids get it. Kids will never have a healthy moment as long as they live.”

Gov. Robert Ehrlich did not respond to Schaefer’s comments at the Board of Public Works meeting, and Shareese DeLeaver, a spokesperson, said he would have no comment on the comptroller’s remarks.