Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 12, No. 16, Ed. 1 Friday, August 18, 1995 Page: 7 of 48
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METRO
2 resign from county’s AIDS review panel after flap over fake documents
Commissioners face calls to eliminate committee or
significantly alter panel’s mission and structure
By John McCoy
STAFF REPORTER OF DALLAS VOICE
A range of critics called on Dallas
County Commissioners Court to disband
or reform a Health Department review
committee this week following a series
of setbacks for its operations.
Labeling the Literature and Program
Review Committee a “menace to public
health,” Dallas attorney Ed Ishmael
urged the court Tuesday to “abolish it,
reconstitute it, do whatever it takes to fix
it.”
Ishmael leads a coalition of doctors,
health professionals, and gay activists in
opposing the county’s restrictions on the
Health Department’s distribution of con-
doms, a move recommended by the
controversial committee.
Two members of the committee,
including the panel’s only health profes-
sional, resigned on Tuesday. The depar-
tures of registered nurse Cassandra Mims
and HIV program administrator Ava
Love come in the wake of questions
about bogus documents presented to a
subcommittee.
At last Thursday’s monthly meeting
of the full committee, Mims demanded
an explanation for why member Wes
Smith had presented a subcommittee
with faxes from “his source at the
[American Medical Association]” who
turned out to be his daughter working as
a temporary secretary at the agency.
The documents allege that the gov-
ernment is withholding information
about AIDS for fear of “pandemonium,”
a charge which AMA administrators flat-
ly deny. Smith’s daughter, Joia Noel
Lucht, was immediately fired over the
incident.
Committee chair Jodie Laubenberg
did not permit discussion of the issue,
saying that it was not on the agenda,
and several members continued a heat-
ed conversation after adjournment.
Laubenberg did not return phone
calls placed on Wednesday.
District 3 Commissioner John Wiley
Price implied that his appointees had
resigned due to pressure from some
commissioners who scrutinized the
employee’s time records.
County employees are under an
order from commissioners not to engage
in advocacy on county time, which has
restricted their contact with outside
media.
Mims, reached by a reporter during
her work hours, declined to comment
on her resignation.
Committee member Sharon
Browning, a Cantrell appointee, said she
was “astonished, like everybody” at the
bogus AMA faxes. Initially interested in
promoting abstinence-based education
for schools, Browning called the com-
mittee’s forays into saliva research “asi-
nine” and stressed that this research was
not the mission of the committee.
“I would not be opposed to starting
over,” she said. “If Commissioner
Cantrell asked me, I would gladly step
down, even though my actions have
been forthright.”
The commissioners created the com-
mittee in January to review the Health
Department’s disease prevention litera-
ture and programs. Members have been
roundly criticized for their lack of med-
ical credentials, long delays in approving
literature, and their interest in research-
ing whether HW can be transmitted
through saliva.
Last week University of North Texas
psychologist Dr. Linda Marshall pulled a
$500,000 study from the county due to
the committee’s prolonged delays in
approving fliers and program elements.
With this move, the county lost funding
for three full-time employees, as well as
partial funding for four others.
In July the Texas Commission on
Alcohol and Drug Abuse ordered Dallas
County to transfer a $247,000 HIV pre-
vention program to a community-based
organization, due to the county’s restric-
tions on literature and the distribution of
needle sterilization kits. ▼
Members of the Razzle Dazzle Dallas board of directors include (back row, l-r) Lisa
Holmes, Jim Harrison, Feleshia Porter, Johnny Isbell, Linda Julian, Evilu Pridgeon
and (front row, l-r) Dee Pennington and Lysa Ausmus.
Organizers cancel
arts test planned
for September
RDD board hands out
$65,000 to 14 groups
By Tammye Nash
STAFF REPORTER OF DALLAS VOICE
The board of directors of Razzle
Dazzle Dallas, Inc. last week announced
the cancellation of the 1995 Oak Lawn
Arts Festival. The arts festival had been
slated for Sept. 17 in Lee Park.
Also last week, the board divided a
total of $65,000 among 14 local and state
AIDS service agencies and gay and les-
bian organizations The largest single
grant, $5,907.58, went to Trinity
Metropolitan Community Church in
Arlington which lost its facilities and
most of its equipment in a tornado earli-
er this ycat.
Dee Pennington, chair of the festi-
val, explained that the festival would
have cost about $10,000 to stage, and
that the board chose instead to distribute
that money with other funds raised by
the Razzle Dazzle Dallas street party in
June.
“This would have been the third
year for the arts festival. The first year,
when we held it up on Cedar Springs,
we broke even. Last year, down at Lee
Park, we made a minimal profit,”
Pennington said. “Rather than spend
$10,000 to make $1,000, we decided it
would be better just to distribute that
$10,000 with the rest of the money we
raised at the street party.”
Razzle Dazzle Dallas began 17 years
as dance party. But some three years
ago the board decided to branch out,
initiating the arts festival and Home for
the Holidays, a program which raises
funds to send persons with AIDS/HTV
home during the Christmas season.
However, Pennington said, even
before deciding to cancel the 1995 arts
festival, the Razzle Dazzle board had
already decided to refocus its energies
on the annual dance party.
“We felt like we were spreading our
CONTINUED ON PAGE 11
Dallasites find
prominence on
national boards
Part 1: The Human
Rights Campaign Fund
By John McCoy
STAFF REPORTER OF DALLAS VOICE
FIRST OF TWO PARTS
The gay and lesbian movement may
have started out as a bi-coastal phe-
nomenon, with hot spots in New York
and San Francisco, but 1990s-style polit-
ical organizing has seen Dallas emerge
as a player in national organizations.
The city boasts a sizable contingent
in the Human Rights Campaign Fund, a
political group devoted to lobbying
Congress on issues of gay and lesbian
concern.
With a two-tiered leadership struc-
ture, the fund has both a Board of
Directors and a Board of Governors.
Currently, three of the 24 directors, and
five of the 54 governors hail from
Dallas.
Lawyer Don McCleary co-chairs the
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
DALLAS VOICE
AUGUST 18, 1995
7
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Vercher, Dennis. Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 12, No. 16, Ed. 1 Friday, August 18, 1995, newspaper, August 18, 1995; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth616033/m1/7/?q=waco+tornado: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.