A veteran Vermont health administrator was appointed head of the state agency that deals with AIDS, a move that those dealing with the disease hope will end a history of quick turnover in the office. Dr. Rod Copeland, a psychologist and former mental health commissioner, was named director of the Vermont Health Department's HIV/AIDS Program last month. He had been serving as interim director since August when his predecessor, Guy Weston, resigned after about six months on the job.

The AIDS program has a budget of $2.8 million and a staff of 11. Copeland is the sixth person in the position since 1997. Weston said there is tension between community advocates for people with AIDS and the Health Department. For example, he said Health Commissioner Jan Carney refused to let him be the department's spokesperson on AIDS issues. "I think the whole civil unions issue has caused a backlash that has caused people to take excessive precautions to avoid controversy," said Weston, who is gay. "And one of those was a refusal to allow a gay man to speak on behalf of the Health Department on AIDS issues."

Carney denied that political considerations played any role in decisions about the AIDS program. "Preventing AIDS and helping people with HIV has always been the focus of that program," she said, though she shied away from discussing Weston's tenure in depth except to praise his work. Sherman Paig of Colchester, a small business owner and co-chair of the HIV Positive Public Policy Project, a working group of HIV-positive Vermonters lobbying on AIDS-related legislation, said he hoped that Copeland would bring stability to the job. "Unfortunately, those of us living with this virus have so many things we have to deal with, and the last thing we need is to be fighting with the Department of Health," he said. "And that's what we seem to be doing all the time." Copeland said his experience as commissioner of mental health has given him experience in dealing with clients, community-based treatment providers, and funding organizations.

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