
          Biting the Budget At Legal Services
          By Looney, GinnyGinny Looney
          Vol. 4, No. 4, 1982, pp. 19-22
          
          In the first budget that Ronald Reagan proposed as President, he
recommended the elimination of the Legal Services Corporation. Reagan
wanted legal aid for the poor provided through block grants and
voluntary efforts of private attorneys. Michael Horowitz, counsel for
policy analysis and law at the Office of Management and Budget, said
in an interview with the New York Times, "The bar has a fundamental
responsibility to undertake that which its own set of ethics
imposes. And we think it somewhat troublesome that a bar whose
members' total gross income now substantially exceeds $20 billion year
needs to lobby for a wholly federally funded program in order to
exercise its own admitted responsibility to represent the poor."
          While unsuccessful in abolishing Legal Services, the Reagan
Administration has struck devastating blows. Funding cutbacks,
proposed restrictions on program activities and appointment of some
members to the board of directors who are hostile to the program's
purpose have left the Corporation suffering.
          That Reagan was unable to end Legal Services was due to strong
support for the program in Congress. In rejecting the view of Senator
Orrin Hatch of Utah that Legal Services attorneys spend "millions of
dollars in what we call lawyer activism for liberal social programs
instead of working for the common needs of the poor," Congress voted
to appropriate $241 million to the Corporation in 1982. Defenders
argued that the program was needed to provide a basic right to those
unable to afford it and to prevent more violent resolution of
disagreements. "True constitutional conservatives support legal
services for the poor because they believe that where government is
based on laws rather than the edict of a few men, there must be access
for all to the applications of those laws to resolve conflicts," said
Representative Neal Smith of Iowa. Representative M. Caldwell Butler,
a key Republican supporter from Virginia, said, "I think the question
is if you believe in the rule of law, in reasonable access to the
legal system."
          The 1982 appropriation represented a twenty-five percent cut for
Legal Services from the previous year, while opponents had proposed
appropriations from zero to one hundred million dollars. For 1983, the
House Appropriations Committee has recommended that the Corporation's
budget remain the same.
          Local programs have responded variously to the cutbacks. Some have
closed offices; others have limited the types of cases they
handle. Staff have been laid off, positions left unfilled, eligibility
requirements changed and efforts increased to involve private
attorneys in the representation of poor people. In Georgia, two
offices were closed and the staff statewide was reduced by
seventy-five people, says John Cromartie, executive director of
Georgia Legal Services. Now two hundred and fifty persons are on the
payroll, which includes every office in the state except the Atlanta
Legal Aid Society.
          Since some state's programs had surpluses from previous years to
enable them to complete cases if funding ended, their financial
problems will become more acute next year. In Mississippi, Michael
Raff, director of that state's Legal Services Coalition, says "there
has been so much expansion of Legal Services with four new programs
just getting built up that the cutbacks haven't had as drastic effect
as they will. In 1983 I see more staff going and more selection in the
types of cases to be handled."
          Because of the reduction in funding and the stiffening of
eligibility requirements in other social programs, the limitations
forced upon legal aid have come at a time when the need is
greatest. As Laurence M. Lavin, director of a South Carolina program,
said in January, "When you have people who are going to have their
food stamps or their Aid to Families with Dependent Children reduced,
then the number eligible for our services is going to increase. At the
same time, our resources are being cut back." Cromartie cites the
elimination of people with mental health disabilities from Social
Security benefits as one example of increased need. "For this year and
next we have set public assistance benefits as a major priority. This
has been a confusing year for clients and there is a lot of fear," he
says. "We have generally viewed our role as helping clients find out
what their rights are."
          Not only federal budget cuts and program changes have increased the
demand for legal aid, but high unemployment has brought more clients
seeking help. These clients--what one attorney called the "new
poor"--present problems like unpaid hospital bills and house
foreclosures which are different because "the established poor never
had enough money to buy a house," says Imogene Walker, a staff
attorney in Georgia. "We also have more calls on how to get
disability, not because the person can't work, but because they can't
get the kind of work they need."
          Except for divorce, Walker's office is still handling the same
types of cases it did a year ago: health care, housing, social
security, consumer complaints, public assistance benefits,
unemployment compensation and civil rights cases. "We have tried to
figure out what kinds of cases clients can't handle for themselves,"
she says.
          But Walker points out that many besides the poor look to Legal
Services for help. "The program has been so simplified in people's
minds to mean free legal advice,"' she says. In talking with potential
clients on the telephone, she quickly finds out whether they are
financially eligible for the program--income for a family of four must
be below the federal poverty level of $9,300 a year. When the caller's
income is too high, she does not hang up, but tries to respond to
their problem.

          
            Congressional Restrictions
          
          Budget cuts have presented the most immediate problem for Legal
Services programs. Next year, however, the Corporation may have to
cope with further prohibitions placed on representing the
poor. Although bipartisan support in Congress has prevented the
complete dismantling of the program, even the strongest defenders
concede that many of the restrictions proposed in House Resolution
3480 must be passed for funding to continue. While a bill
reauthorizing the Legal Services Corporation is not likely to pass
this session because Senate backers Lowell Weicker of Connecticut and
Thomas Eagleton of Missouri are busy with reelection campaigns, the
limitations proposed are expected to become effective in the next
year, probably by being attached to a resolution for continuing
funding.
          The most damaging provisions of HR 3480 curtail lobbying, class
action lawsuits against government, and representation of known
illegal aliens, such as Haitians and Cubans. Legal Services attorneys
are already prohibited from handling criminal or fee-producing cases
and from seeking desegregation or "nontherapeutic" abortions on behalf
of clients.
          "At the moment that state legislatures are enacting new regulations
to enforce block grants and decide how to appropriate the money under
them, that is the moment Legal Services is no longer being able to
represent clients before the state legislatures," Bernard Veney,
executive director of the National Clients Council, said at the July
convention of the National Bar Association in Atlanta. The proposed
restriction on lobbying allows Legal Services staff to give
information only when specifically requested by a lawmaker. "Anyone
familiar with the legislative process knows that just doesn't happen,"
says Jim Martin, former legislative advocate for Georgia Legal
Services. "Legislators want and expect to hear from the affected
parties and if they don't, they asume there is no problem with the
bill."
          In anticipation of the policy prohibiting lobbying, Legal Services
in Georgia stopped its legislative program in January. As a result,
says Martin, legislative representation of the poor has
suffered. During the regular session of the Georgia General Assembly,
for example, a bill passed which reduced in half, to seven days, the
time a landlord must wait between serving an eviction notice and
putting a tenant's belongings on the street. "After the bill was
introduced," Martin explains, "there were not sufficient legislative
requests for information that would have allowed us to explain all the
reasons the bill was bad. What we would have done in the past is
contact the author and committee members and members of the House and
explained the consequences of the bill. All we could do this time is
respond to the author of the bill and members at the committee
meeting."
          Equally onerous is the proposed provision in HR 3480 which
prohibits class action lawsuits against government. agencies. Class
action suits, less than one percent of the cases filed by Legal
Services, are important because they allow relief at once to large
numbers of people rather than forcing attorneys to return to court
again and again to enforce the same right for each individual. Class
action suits in California blocking the importation of Mexican workers
and $210 million cuts in Medicaid led then Governor Reagan in 1970 to
attempt to block federal funding for legal representation of the
poor. Similarly, class action suits against the state of Georgia in
the mid-seventies caused the General Assembly to end funding for Legal
Services. The program had just won a case establishing that a
self-employed painter who broke both legs while working and a diabetic
woman who was not able to work were both entitled to benefits under
the Vocational Rehabilitation Act. Georgia Legal Services had also
sued the state to end co-payments required of Medicaid recipients.
          In an interview with the New York Times, a former
president of the Corporation explained the necessity of suing the
government. "Legal Services lawyers don't sue to increase benefits,"
said Thomas Ehrlich. "They bring suit to insure that poor people get
what they are entitled to under the law. When a legal aid lawyer is
successful in such cases, it means that a public official has not been
doing his or her job the way he or she should."
          
            The Reagan Board
          
          When the Congressional restrictions are passed, they will be
enforced by a Reagan-appointed board of directors. Because they were
appointed while Congress was in recess--a move questioned as illegal
by 133 House members in a letter to the President--the nominees do not
have to be confirmed for a year. However, the White House agreed to
submit their names to the Senate. Eight have been approved by
committee and await only a vote of 

the full Senate. The ninth, George
Paras, a former California judge, has not been considered because of
an Administration request. Once, in a letter to the former director of
the California Rural Legal Assistance Program, Paras wrote, "You must
ever champion the 'oppressed,' meaning those who so designate
themselves, such as criminals, handicapped, welfare recipients,
demonstrators, minorities and miscellaneous other have- lots
. . . Your problem is that you feel it is your obligation to be a
professional Mexican rather than a lawyer." Only one Carter appointee
remains on the board, a client representitive.
          As in many of Reagan's nominations in other departments of
government, he has named people to the Legal Services board who in the
past have opposed the program. William Olson, who received an
eight-to-seven committee confirmation vote, was head of the Reagan
transition team on Legal Services which reportedly advocated the
abolition of the Corporation. Such appointments violate the
legislative mandate that nominees should be "fully committed to the
role of legal assistance attorneys and support the underlying
principle of this legislation that it is in the national interest that
the poor have full access under law to comprehensive and effective
legal services."
          Not only the philosophy of a few new board members but the timing
of their appointments has caused ill will. Seven were appointed on the
last day of 1981, in time for a board meeting and a vote to stop 1982
grants until they could be reviewed. Their vote came too late,
however, since the funds to local programs had been awarded and the
contracts already mailed.
          In deciding how to implement Congressional restric-

tions. the Reagan
board w ill no doubt take a more narrow view of what Legal Services
programs can do. It may also seek to provide legal aid to the poor in
ways other than the present predominant use of staff attorneys. During
the 1981 funding battle, Reagan aide Edward Meese suggested that law
school clinical programs should be used to counsel the poor while
public funds served as seed money to encourage innovative programs.
          In fact, a shift to more involvement of private attorneys in
representing the poor has already begun. Last year the board mandated
that ten percent of each program's funds were to be used to provide
opportunities for private attorneys to assist the poor through such
means as organized pro bono programs, contracts with specific
attorneys, partial compensation through a judicare system or lawyer
referral services. The amount of the set-aside could be raised.
          Local programs already work with private attorneys in some
communities. In the Douglasville. Georgia. regional office just west
of Atlanta. persons seeking help who are not eligible for services are
referred to three attorneys in private practice. A questionnaire was
mailed last year to lawyers in the ten counties served by the office
to determine who would take referrals and what kinds. "Now that they
are getting inundated with calls from poor people. some have asked to
be taken off our list." Walker says. "Basically we're talking about
pro bono work because our clients are so poor that they can only pay
$10 or $16 a month. If they can pay the filing fee and court
cost. then the lawyer is doing the work for free."
          "This is a period of slow change for Legal Services." says state
director Cromartie of Georgia. "It is obvious that the new board is
not of the same philosophic bent as the old but it also is not yet
clear that the extreme right wing hold the balance. Several new
members are moderates: there's a school of thought that they are
fair-minded people. If so. we won't see shocking changes."
Mississippi's Raff agrees: "There are members who are sincere and
sensitive and looking to be educated about Legal Services."
          The shifting political climate is having a restraining effect on
Legal Services as the program accommodates itself to limited resources
and anticipated guidelines. Legal Services' staff speak cautiously
about changes which have taken place in the past twenty months and are
reluctant to predict actions of the new national board--no need to
provide further ammunition for damaging the program. The deputy
director of the Atlanta office said she had to check with the public
affairs office in Washington before speaking for publication because
they were trying to "coordinate press relations." A report on voting
rights contracted by Georgia Legal Services was issued publicly
without any information identifying it with the organization. Legal
Services supporters are making compromises and concessions in order,
as Representative' Barney Frank of Massachusetts said last year, to
"keep this alive for a better day."
          Both Raff and Cromartie are confident that the Legal Services
Corporation will survive. "I think Congress has spoken: Legal Services
is here to stay," Raff says. Yet, as advocate Martin of Georgia points
out, Congress has been making major changes in federal programs
through the larger debate on the budget without allowing votes on
individual programs. He says Legal Services could get eliminated in
this squeeze, even though deleting its small appropriation would have
little effect on balancing the overall US budget. If no bill passes
this session of Congress, the fight to reauthorize Legal Services must
begin again next year. A Presidential veto is also possible.
          Rather than outright elimination, however, Raff is concerned about
the toll on staff and clients caused by the reduction in resources and
restrictions on activities. "What clients will be represented? What
cases won't be taken? Who stays on the staff and who goes? I'm more
worried about that than whether we will survive." But, he might as
easily have asked, at what point do the cutbacks and prohibitions on
representation ultimately disable the work of Legal Services?
          
            Ginny Looney is a writer and researcher living in
Atlanta. She is the author of Preparing Students for Work: An
Evaluation of Co-op Programs in Georgia, available from the
Southern Regional Council for four dollars plus handling and
postage.
          
        