Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles
Times
July 30, 1999, Friday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Page 3; Metro Desk
LENGTH: 1454 words
HEADLINE:
CALIFORNIA AND THE WEST;
LEGAL AID AGENCIES FEELING PRESSURE TO MERGE;
FUNDING: ORGANIZATION THAT DISTRIBUTES FEDERAL MONEY IS COMPELLING
SMALL GROUPS TO CONSOLIDATE. SOME FEAR A DECLINE IN SERVICE.
BYLINE: CAITLIN LIU, TIMES STAFF WRITER
BODY:
Across the state and nation, among many
organizations that provide legal services to the poorest of the poor, merger
mania is in the air.
Although there have been marriages between legal
aid groups in the past, the current wave of consolidations and merger talks is
occurring at a speed and scale unprecedented in legal services history.
The driving force is the Legal Services Corp., the
quasi-government agency that allocates congressional funding for legal aid.
Compelled to cut costs and improve services, the agency--the single largest
source of legal aid funding in the country--has been pressuring some groups that
receive its grants to consolidate or risk losing their grants.
That, in
turn, has led to a concern that civil legal services will be less available to
those in need. "Basically, it's our clients who are paying the costs of the
mergers," said Bill Kennedy, managing attorney of the Sacramento office of Legal
Services of Northern California.
Some legal aid experts predict that the
consolidations will lead to greater savings and improved client services, but
others question the necessity of the mergers.
"What's really bizarre
about it is that it's a solution in search of a problem," said Gary Blasi, who
worked in legal services for 20 years before becoming a law professor at UCLA.
In some areas, he said, a forced merger "just doesn't make any sense."
In the San Francisco Bay area, five groups were told by the
Legal Services Corp. in December that it would fund only one of
them starting in 2000.
"We're looking at a shotgun wedding," said Bari
Robinson, executive director of the Alameda County Bar Assn. "We're being
dragged into this. The whole thing is repugnant."
Legal Services
Corp. forced San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation to
take charge of the Alameda legal aid service area earlier last year, and the
combined agency is now planning to merge with Contra Costa Legal Services
Foundation and Community Legal Services of Santa Clara County. The two other
groups, Legal Aid of the North Bay and the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo, have
not yet agreed.
Even groups that have not been forced into mergers are
feeling the heat. Like many others around the country, the five organizations in
the Los Angeles-Orange County metropolitan area that receive Legal
Services Corp. funding are voluntarily planning to consolidate into
three, because of expectations that they may otherwise be forced to do so. They
have already agreed that the two smallest--Legal Aid Foundation of Long Beach
and Legal Services Program for Pasadena and San Gabriel-Pomona Valley--must go.
Although the San Gabriel group has not yet decided on a merger partner, the Long
Beach organization announced this week that it will consolidate with the Legal
Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, effective in December 2000.
Legal aid
groups in Arizona, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Nebraska, Mississippi
and several other states are also either merging, or seriously considering it,
said Kim Dixon, spokeswoman for Legal Services Corp.
"It's not about saving money per se. It's about efficiency in creating
delivery systems that will provide better services," Dixon said.
Only
Recourse for the Needy
For the poor, who have the legal right to an
attorney in criminal matters, legal aid organizations are often the only place
they can turn if they have civil legal problems. Legal aid provides a range of
free services such as aiding abused women in securing restraining orders,
resolving landlord-tenant disputes, assisting with consumer fraud complaints and
helping the needy obtain government benefits.
To qualify for aid funded
by Legal Services Corp., a person cannot earn more than 125% of
the federal poverty level. That equals an annual income of no more than $ 10,300
for an individual or $ 20,875 for a family of four.
Policy changes in
Washington can have a profound impact on the level of services rendered. Studies
in the 1980s and early 1990s showed that more than 80% of the legal needs of the
nation's poor were not being met, according to a 1996 report by the State Bar of
California. In 1996, a year in which Congress slashed agency funding by 30%,
numerous recipient groups had to lay off employees, which meant even more
low-income people were not being served.
"Nobody's getting hurt but the
clients," said Lucinda Horne, president of California Client Council, which
represents legal aid client interests.
Although the ultimate effects of
mergers are not yet known, the advantages and disadvantages were felt recently
in Northern California, when tiny Redwood Legal Assistance, which served four
Northern California counties, was forced to merge with Legal Services of
Northern California, which handled an additional 19 counties.
The merger
is expected to produce many long-term benefits, said Jake J. Smith, former
director of Redwood and now managing attorney for the regional office. Through
the Northern California group, Redwood received technology upgrades. The staff
has received training for a better case management system, he said, and there is
now a richer pool of co-workers for sharing expertise.
At the same time,
the merger has been painful. Legal Services Corp. did not
provide additional money to cover merger costs. Because the larger,
Sacramento-based group was unionized, it had to lay off Redwood employees it
could not bring in at its higher urban salary rates.
Redwood, which once
had six attorneys, now has four. And only one of its two paralegals remains,
Smith said. Outreach offices in Ft. Bragg and Lake County had to be closed. At
least one of those offices might have been eliminated anyway because of
Redwood's dwindling resources, Smith said, but the merger directly caused the
other's demise.
Legal Services of Northern California spent money and a
lot of staff time to bring Redwood into its fold, which meant that resources had
to be shifted away from the other communities it served, said Roberta Ranstrom,
the executive director of the Northern California agency at the time of the
merger. Months after the merger, Redwood's contributions to Northern
California's budget were still not covering the administrative overhead it
required. "I wish the costs didn't have to come out of our hide," Ranstrom said.
The Legal Services Corp.'s approach should have been
less "heavy-handed," Smith said. "There could have and should have been more
financial support."
Ahn Tu, the agency's program counsel for a number of
western states including California, said, "In the short run there may be some
costs, but maybe a year from now they can hire more staff."
Legal Services Corp.'s urge to merge is motivated by
good intentions, even many critics of the mergers say. Under siege by
congressional conservatives who have cut, or threatened to slash, its funding
for many years, the agency has been trying to stretch its dollars further.
For 1999, Congress increased the agency's funding by 6%, to $ 300
million--the same amount it received in 1980. The agency's budget is still 25%
less than its 1995 funding of $ 400 million.
Critical Audit by Federal
Agency
Recently, the agency and its budget came under more fire because
of reports that legal aid groups had been over-reporting their caseload. A
General Accounting Office audit of five large legal aid programs, including the
Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, revealed that they overstated their number
of cases by about 33%. The agency reported serving close to 2 million clients in
1997.
The problems were due to an older, faulty reporting system, said
Legal Services spokeswoman Dixon. "In no instance was there an intentional
over-reporting of cases."
The GAO audit, based on 1997 data, also did
not capture results from a new case reporting system that the agency rolled out
late last year, she added. "We're confident that these fixes we put into the
system are taking effect right now."
Still, in such tenuous political
times, legal aid providers are eager to use, or at least appear to use, their
scarce resources wisely.
"We need to reach more people more
effectively," said Alan Houseman, director of the Center for Law and Social
Policy, who works with the agency and advocates greater consolidation of
services.
Reducing administrative overhead, for example, can lead to
savings that could allow groups to expand their client services. Having an
integrated intake system such as a single regional hotline number, for example,
can reduce client confusion and allow them easier access to services.
"Efficiency is really the key word," Dixon said. "We're interested in
creating comprehensive delivery programs."
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July 30, 1999