Changes proposed
by the Bush administration to the way federal Ryan White
CARE Act funds are distributed could cost San Francisco $9
million over the next five years, reports the Bay
Area Reporter. Administration officials
announced that they will urge Congress to change the
Ryan White funding formulas away from the current
method of using a region's cumulative number of AIDS
cases to allocate funds to instead looking at which
areas have rising HIV infection rates and unmet
treatment needs. But that would cost San Francisco, which
was one of the first U.S. cities to report AIDS cases,
up to $9 million in federal funding and the state of
California as much as $20 million, AIDS advocates say.
Local officials say they plan to lobby Congress to limit
the extent of the funding cuts to areas with
long-established AIDS epidemics, including San
Francisco. "There is plenty of room for
negotiation," Ernest Hopkins, director of federal
affairs for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, told
the Bay Area Reporter.