Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Group wants taxpayer money for festival

CARSON CITY -- A group that was allocated $250,000 in taxpayer money to combat AIDS wants to use half that money for a gospel festival.

During the Legislature's special session this summer, Assemblyman Wendell Williams, D-North Las Vegas, proposed, and the 2003 Legislature approved, appropriating the money to a group called Fighting AIDS in our Community Today for outreach, testing, counseling and dissemination of information on HIV/AIDS.

It was one of the few programs in the Legislature that got special funding during a year lawmakers had to increase taxes by $836 million.

But now state officials are balking at the organization's proposal to spend $125,000 to stage a gospel festival.

To get its money released from the state Human Resources Department, FACT has to submit a plan detailing how the money will be spent. The original budget submitted to the state called for $25,479 to discover the feasibility of having a gospel festival. And $100,000 was to be spent on the location, artists and a video production, according to the documents sent to the state.

The group also wants to spend $18,720 on pamphlets, condoms, phone cards, grocery vouchers, bus passes, T-shirts, soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant and feminine hygiene products and bottled water for 40 participants in the program for the next year.

State Human Resources Director Mike Willden said the $250,000 will not be released until the state gathers more information on how the money is going to be spent.

Mike Chambliss, the chairman of the board for the nonprofit, said the organization explored the gospel concert idea because they hoped it could become an annual fund-raiser for FACT.

"We want to be self-sustaining so that we don't have to seek any money from the public coffers," he said. "We were looking at staging the concert, selling tickets, selling videos, getting the backing of top gospel performers, and it would be something we could build from.

"These wild tales that we were spending all this money in some inappropriate way are wrong. All our books are open to the public. We had a bookkeper before we had a dime. He worked for us for free for the first few years."

He said the organization has a solid track record and an important mission, and those are the reasons they received the state appropriation in the first place.

Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, whose Ways and Means Committee processed the bill in the second special session, said the proposal to appropriate state money for the organization came from Williams.

"It is not my bill, it's my roommate's bill," Arberry said, referring to Williams, his roommate during the legislative session.

In addition to proposing the allocation for the AIDS group, Williams is a co-worker of two officers for the organization. The president of the nonprofit group is Chambliss and the treasurer is Franklin Simpson, who work with Williams at Las Vegas City Hall.

Chambliss said he and Williams both work in the city's Neighborhood Services division, but "there are no financial ties between FACT and Assemblyman Williams or Assemblyman Arberry."

Williams has been unavailable for comment since Friday.

Arberry, who retired from the city's Neighborhood Services division, said he first heard of the gospel festival this week when he received a call from a legislative staff member. He said he opposes spending the money in that way.

"I want to try to keep religion out of this," Arberry said.

He said Williams has set up a meeting for Friday to talk to those involved about the gospel and other matters.

Arberry said he was sold on the $250,000 when he was told West Las Vegas was the "capital of AIDS" in the state. He said it has the highest rate of AIDS cases in Nevada. He said West Las Vegas "has been treated as a stepchild" even though it is in an urban area.

The original bill to allocate $250,000 to FACT was introduced in the Senate but it died in the Senate Finance Committee during the regular session. Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, opposed AB8 when Gov. Kenny Guinn introduced it on the last day of the second special session of the Legislature and said there were questions about it being for "political favors."

The bill requires that no more than 10 percent of the money be used for administrative expenses and that a report be filed to the Legislative Interim Finance Committee before Dec. 15, 2004 on how the money will be spent.

The bill also included money for different programs of the University of Nevada's medical school. It passed 28-14 in the Assembly and 19-1 in the Senate. Beers said he thinks HIV/AIDS prevention is an important public issue. But, he added, "It sounds like a pretty big gospel festival. You could buy an awful lot of Christian songbooks for $100,000."

Chambliss explained that the production costs for a professional concert at a large venue, "are huge."

Beers voted against the bill and at the time made controversial comments about the money being spent to put put condoms on gay black men in the community. Chambliss said FACT sprang out of concerns related to the high percentage of HIV invection in prostitutes that were being arrested in West Las Vegas several years ago.

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