Responses of Robert Pittman to GLAA 2004 Questionnaire
for D.C. Council Candidates
| Yes/No (+/- 2) |
Substance (+/- 4) |
Record (+/- 3) |
Championship (+/- 1) |
Total (+/- 10) |
| 1 ½ | 0 | ½ | 0 | 2 |
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 support an Office of Citizen Complaint Review that is fair and provides educational materials to the entire community. I testified before the Committee on the Judiciary in 1997 regarding this issue. We cannot stop with this alone. All police agencies that enforce our laws should come under the purview of the OCCR. I watch with a great deal of concern what other police agencies do with respect to individual rights.
Another issue is oversight at the Council level on Special Police Officers and security guards. As a Council Member, I will address all of these issues and not limit it to the Metropolitan Police Department.
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?
As a former Member of the Mayor's Emergency Medical Services Advisory Committee and Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Public Awareness and the Sub-Committee on Legislative Affairs, I not only supported public safety personnel having this training, I sat in on the training personally. My approach and recommendation will be to fund your request, but I also want more interaction between various segments of our community with government employees. It is hard to disrespect another human being if you have a working relationship with that person.
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. The Department of Health continues to grow and a Committee on Health would work toward my goals of developing real prevention and outreach plans as stated in the D.C. Healthy People 2020 Plan.
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. I will support those efforts.
5. Will you ask the D.C. Inspector General for a full audit of the HIV/AIDS Administration and its contractors?
Yes.
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?
Yes. It is an issue that we have looked at from a public health perspective. I have been involved in those types of discussions and support GLAA's position.
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?
Yes. It's an issue that many citizens face across the country. I think we can do much more to alleviate the problem. I believe that the Department of Insurance should be more aggressive and make the insurance industry responsive to the needs of District residents.
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. I am proud of the Human Rights laws in the District and would work to see that the Office is capable of fulfilling its mission to the employees, citizens and visitors of the District.
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?
Bigotry will not be tolerated from anyone.
Defending Our Families
10. Will you support legal recognition of marriages between partners of the same sex?
I support the laws of the District and the decisions of the voters.
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. That is in everyone's benefit.
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 am willing to listen to the issues and work to do what best serves the people of the District of Columbia.
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?
If there is government money involved, then I would think the greater question is how do we have accountability? Would we be better served by insuring that "we the people" have a right to equal protections under the law even in religious schools? I think I could serve the public interest better from this position.
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?
Yes. That kind of thinking has never worked across the centuries. It does not benefit the citizens of the District and potentially would lead to an increase in sexually transmitted disease.
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?
I would need more specific information. There are some laws that should be repealed.
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.
