04/09/2001

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – President Bush will soon announce a reorganized White House AIDS office that will tie efforts to combat the disease into a key domestic policy team and two Cabinet agencies, an administration official said Sunday.

Scott Evertz, leader of the Log Cabin Republicans in Wisconsin, will head the new Office of National AIDS Policy. He will become the first openly gay person nominated to an executive branch office by a Republican president. Evertz is a political ally of Health Secretary Tommy Thompson, a former Wisconsin governor.

Evertz will be a member of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said an administration official who insisted on anonymity. The new office also will include one staff member from the State Department and another from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Inclusion of a State Department staffer would mark an expansion of the AIDS office's structure under President Clinton, the official said. That person would work to address AIDS-related issues overseas, particularly in Africa.

A full-time administrative assistant will also work in the AIDS office.

In addition, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Thompson will head an AIDS task force that Clinton created, the official said.

Bush was to announce the AIDS efforts, and who will head the Office of National AIDS policy, in the near future, the official said.

Bush has faced criticism in recent weeks about his commitment to fighting AIDS, most recently when word surfaced that he would not seek increases for certain programs that address the disease.

The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, for instance, which provides $1.8 billion in services to AIDS patients, will see no new money, prompting howls from activists.

But The Washington Post reported Sunday that Bush will seek a $688 million increase in HHS spending on AIDS, emphasizing research to develop a vaccine and international efforts to combat the virus.

Critics pounced when Bush's chief of staff, Andy Card, said in February that the Office of National AIDS Policy would be eliminated.

The administration said Card had misspoken because he was unaware that other top administration officials had already contacted HHS about an AIDS office. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the AIDS policy office would remain open as a task force, two HHS employees and a member of the White House's Domestic Policy Council.

The impending announcement goes a step further than that plan by keeping open the Office of National AIDS Policy, which Clinton created in 1994.