Responses of Jacque D. Patterson to GLAA 2004 Questionnaire
for D.C. Council Candidates
| Yes/No (+/- 2) |
Substance (+/- 4) |
Record (+/- 3) |
Championship (+/- 1) |
Total (+/- 10) |
| 1 | ½ | 0 | 0 | 1 ½ |
Public Safety
1. Will you support an annual budget for the Office of Citizen Complaint Review big enough to prevent the development of a backlog of citizen allegations of police misconduct?
Yes! I believe in the concept of community policing and one of the best ways to encourage confidence in MPD is by ensuring that offices charged with interacting with the community is fully funded.
2. Will you support funding for mandatory gay male, lesbian, bisexual and transgender sensitivity and diversity training including gay and transgender community representatives as a continuing part of the training for all members of the Metropolitan Police Department and the Fire/EMS Department?
Yes! This is needed to ensure that no resident is discriminated against during crimes and life or death situations!
Public Health & AIDS
3. Will you lobby your colleagues and Council Chairman Linda Cropp to create a new Committee on Health, split out from the current Committee on Human Services, that will be chaired by someone committed to vigorous oversight of the Department of Health?
Yes! As a former employee of the DC Department of Health, I know first hand the dysfunctional condition it is in. Councilmember Allen who chairs the Committee on Health and Human Services has been weak in oversight, hence the reason I am running against her. With a quarter of the district budget, this committee needs to be in the hands of someone who can effect change.
4. The rate of HIV infections in DC is the highest in the United States, rivaling levels in sub-Saharan Africa. Problems of rampant corruption, illegal activities, and demoralized staff at the HIV/AIDS Administration (HAA) have been well documented. Yet there has not been an oversight hearing on HAA for more than a year. The previous oversight hearing was five years earlier. If elected or re-elected to the Council, will you ensure that the Council holds an annual performance oversight hearing on HAA?
Yes! Again, we're talking about the councilmember who I am running to replace. Her lack of attention to HAA has devastated not only the agency, but has wide spread effects on the deliverables of HAA. It's time for a change to someone who knows how to review policies and programs and recommend improvements where needed. I'm a trained policy analyst. I will demand oversight hearings of HAA, recommend corrective procedures, and hold directors accountable so that the District of Columbia will not have the statistics of a Third World country in the area of HIV/AIDS.
5. Will you ask the D.C. Inspector General for a full audit of the HIV/AIDS Administration and its contractors?
Yes! I think this is needed in order to clearly understand the problems in this agency. At some time there may even need to be criminal charges brought against those accused of sexual harassment or fraud, waste and abuse of government time and materials.
6. The current HIV epidemiological surveillance system discourages people-especially immigrants-from getting tested by requiring both their partial Social Security Number and their country of origin. This potentially threatens their ability to stay in this country. Will you support and vote for legislation that will eliminate the partial Social Security Number from the unique identifier system?
No, in a cross referencing system, I believe you need at least two identifiers for tracking. When trying to track the progression of an epidemic, you need to know not only the place but also the person of origin or in the line of progression. While I don't support the elimination of partial SSN, I do support repercussions on entities that persecute individuals who are identified through the program unjustly.
7. Only one insurance company operating in D.C. offers domestic partner coverage to small businesses that wish to offer the benefit. Will you vote in favor of legislation requiring insurance carriers to make domestic partner coverage available for small businesses that want to offer this health care benefit to their employees?
I am a strong proponent of equal civil rights for civil unions between same sex couples. To this end, I would support legislation that requires insurance carriers to provide coverage for partners where a civil union has taken place.
Human Rights
8. Despite significant improvements made in the operations of the Office of Human Rights (OHR) in the past several years, the OHR FY 2005 budget was not increased to hire additional investigators and other staff so that the case backlog will continue to drop. Will you support maintaining funding levels and aggressive oversight to ensure that the OHR case backlog continues to drop?
Yes. The primary function of government is to ensure that it works for its residents! Strong oversight and adequate funding is necessary to ensure that government can achieve it's mission.
9. Will you block ceremonial resolutions and otherwise decline to honor individuals or organizations that promote any sort of bigotry, including but not limited to the Salvation Army, Assemblies of God and the Boy Scouts of America?
Discrimination is wrong not matter who the person or organization. Government can not legislate the actions of private citizens and organization but it has a responsibility to not condone bigoted behavior by not honoring it with ceremonial resolutions.
Defending Our Families
10. Will you support legal recognition of marriages between partners of the same sex?
I believe in civil rights for civil unions. Trying to define what the ceremony of marriage means takes away from the real issue of ensuring that same sex couples are given equal treatment under the law as what is called "traditional" couples. Rights to health care, recognition as a legal partner, the ability to make legal decision and take legal responsibility for a partner are the rights I pride myself on fighting for same sex couples.
11. Will you support legislation in the District to expand the domestic partner program to include all of the relevant rights and responsibilities of marriage in D.C. law?
Yes! 100% -- Civil rights for Civil Unions!
12. Will you support the legislative and/or regulatory changes necessary to ensure that the District recognizes marriages, civil unions, and domestic partnerships established in other jurisdictions?
I believe that any right and corresponding responsibilities granted in other democratic jurisdictions should not be abridged in any way by the District of Columbia government. To that effect, I support recognition of civil unions, domestic partnerships and even marriages established in other jurisdictions.
Public Education and Youth
13. Will you oppose both federally and locally funded voucher programs that place students in religious schools and outside the protections of the D.C. Human Rights Act?
Yes! As a proud Democrat, I am strongly opposed to vouchers. I support the expansion of charter schools which provides choice for partners of children in failing schools but still remains under the authority and accountability of the government.
14. Will you oppose the use of either federal or District taxpayer funds to promote so-called "abstinence-only-until-marriage" sex education that undermines safer-sex programs by discouraging the use of condoms and that tells gay and lesbian students that they must be celibate forever because they may not legally marry?
There is never one solution to any problem that confronts society. It is usually multi-faceted. In that sense, we need multi-faceted programs to address sex education with District youth. We must always deal with reality, and reality is that our youth are having sex at an early age, that there is a larger acceptance of same sex relationship among them. We are charged with educating our youth, not stifling their knowledge and their rights as citizens.
Modernizing the Criminal Code
15. Will you vote to repeal the use of undefined and unspecified common law crimes and to repeal the laws criminalizing verbal solicitations of legal sexual activity?
Without a reference point of which law you're specifically speaking of, I could not make a definitive answer. What I will say is that I will review and support the decriminalization of law that is unjust and discriminatory in its language.
Record
Your record is part of your rating. Please list any actions that you have taken that may help illustrate your record on behalf of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders.
