Those who pay taxes, no matter their sexual orientation, should be appalled by the revelation of frivolous spending of HIV-AIDS grant funds by a few Mississippi nonprofits and how little they accomplished toward the grant funding’s objectives.
State Auditor Shad White, whose agency exposed the waste, was justified in his disbelief that the Mississippi State Department of Health, which administered the federal grant funding, allowed such expenditures to occur. Among the more outrageous examples of spending the auditors found:
- More than $17,000 to host what was billed as a “Queerceanera,” a gay pride event targeted to the Hispanic community. The name was an obvious takeoff from Quinceañera, the coming-of-age party in Latin cultures that is celebrated when a girl turns 15 years old.
- Some $4,000 to cover rental fees for a nightclub to host monthly “diva brunches.” The nightclub, incidentally, is run by the grant recipient’s director.
- More than $140,000 on salaries for employees who identify as “gender non-conformant” between the ages of 17 and 34 and who either have HIV or are at risk of contracting the sexually transmitted disease.
- More than $90,000 for which no receipts or supporting documentation were provided to the Department of Health.
Altogether, according to the Audit Department, the three nonprofits received a combined $853,000 between 2020 and 2025 and administered just 35 HIV tests. That comes to a cost of more than $24,000 per test — an abysmal rate of return on grant funding whose purpose was to reduce the number of HIV infections in Mississippi.
To its credit, the Department of Health did not try to defend the expenditures following the release this week of the state auditor’s report. It agreed that the spending was “unacceptable,” that it was aware of past problems with lax oversight of grant funding, and that it had already taken steps to better regulate what gets funded and how the money is spent. The Health Department also said that the three nonprofits singled out by the auditor’s report no longer have active grants or contracts with the agency.
Although such indefensible expenditures are just a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars a year in federal funding that flow through the Department of Health, waste like this can tarnish in the public’s eye even the funding that is spent properly and to good purpose. If such waste can occur, people wonder, how much other squandering takes place that never comes to light?
It’s an understandable reaction.
The public is justifiably predisposed to believe that the government at all levels wastes money. There are just too many examples of it occurring. Thus, it is probably unrealistic to hope to eliminate government waste in its entirety. It is reasonable, though, to expect it to be contained to a tolerable level.
When the waste exceeds that modest threshold, it is helpful for it to be exposed. Kudos to Shad White for doing so.
