Los Angeles County Supervisors Order Office of AIDS Programs and Policy To Submit Audit in Two Weeks
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has ordered the county Office of AIDS Programs and Policy to release the results of an audit within two weeks after a series of delays, the Los Angeles Daily News reports (Rester, Los Angeles Daily News, 8/7). The board ordered the audit in March over concerns about the distribution of $80 million in county funds and state and federal grants. HIV/AIDS activists and county officials had expressed concerns that AIDS office Director Chuck Henry, who also heads the office's 50-member HIV Commission and determines the distribution of funds, had a conflict of interest (California Health Line, 7/2). Ron Hanson, health deputy for Supervisor Zev Yarolavsky, in February asked OAPP to provide a geographic analysis of the distribution of funds to HIV/AIDS service providers. In March, Supervisors Michael Antonovich and Don Knabe filed a formal request to determine whether OAPP "ignored" their districts. Antonovich said that of the $8.2 million distributed to HIV/AIDS service providers in the county, fewer than 1% went to providers in the Antelope Valley and only 7% went to the San Fernando Valley; however, 47% went "to one geographic area within Los Angeles County." Antonovich also said that OAPP spends more than the national average for support of the office's planning council (Ocamb, Frontiers, 8/16).
A preliminary draft of the audit submitted last Friday to the health experts of county supervisors only included an "updated" version of a plan to spend the funds, the Daily News reports. Knabe has asked the county's chief administrative officer to develop a plan to correct problems with the OAPP audit and ensure that the office submits the report to supervisors on time. In addition, Jonathan Fielding, director of public health for Los Angeles, said that he instructed OAPP to update data in the audit to ensure that the report "reflected the most recent trends in the epidemic" (Los Angeles Daily News, 8/7).
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