Copyright 1999 The Buffalo News
The Buffalo News
September 3, 1999, Friday, CITY EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE, Pg. 2B
LENGTH: 603 words
HEADLINE:
JUSTICE, DOLLARS AND CONGRESS
BODY:
Despite
a last-minute move in the right direction by the House, Congress still has some
work to do when it returns if the concept of equal protection under the law
isn't to be further eroded when it comes to civil justice for the poor.
The Legal Services Corp., which helps fund Buffalo's
Neighborhood Legal Services and 257 other programs around the country, is a
constant target of right-wing lawmakers who apparently think Americans are
entitled only to as much justice as they can buy.
Three years ago, the
Republican-controlled Congress stopped legal services lawyers from pursuing
class-action suits, effectively turning the poor into second-class litigants.
This year, House members started out by trying to do even more damage,
attempting to cut the corporation's $ 300 million budget by over 50 percent, a $
159 million reduction that would have eviscerated the program. In a show of only
moderate shortsightedness, the lower chamber ended up slicing only $ 50 million
off the budget. But that still would leave the program moving further in the
wrong direction, as it has been since 1995.
In Buffalo, the House cut
would translate into about a $ 155,000 reduction for NLS, if the cut were spread
evenly across the nation. Local administrators call that "quite a big blow" for
a program that already must stop taking calls by 9:30 or 10 a.m. each morning
because it doesn't have the resources to handle any more new cases.
Targeted grants -- such as for domestic violence -- already make up the
bulk of the NLS' roughly $ 2.5 million budget here. But the federal money is
important because it allows the flexibility to meet whatever needs arise.
While the House wants to cut funding, President Clinton has recommended
a $ 40 million increase. That still wouldn't restore funding to the $ 400
million level of four years ago, nor compensate for inflation. But it would at
least acknowledge the important work these lawyers do for those who often have
no place else to turn.
The Senate has come down in the middle, proposing
to keep funding at this year's $ 300 million level.
Ordinarily, that
might portend a compromise that would at least split the difference. But with
House Republicans hating the program so much, nothing is assured without a firm
White House stance.
Why the program infuriates the right-wing so much is
anyone's guess. The program's lawyers handle domestic-violence cases, help the
battered obtain orders of protection, help parents obtain child support, help
the elderly when they get scammed by fraud artists and help poor tenants fight
for their rights against slumlords.
That's not very radical stuff, by
any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it's a good bet that most in this
country believe all Americans -- not just the well-off -- should have access to
the courts to pursue such basic rights.
This year, the dispute was
spiced by an audit showing that the program -which closed 1.1 million cases last
year -- reported handling 75,000 more cases than it actually did in 1997.
Spokesmen say the problem resulted from efforts to deal with a rising caseload
amid a constricted budget by referring more cases to other agencies, doing more
telephone consultations and confusion over how to count such client encounters.
They have rewritten the program's 20-year-old handbook and made other changes to
eliminate the problem.
But in truth, the Legal Services
Corp. has been under congressional attack since well before that
bookkeeping problem surfaced. It shouldn't be, if the poor are to have any
chance at what's supposed to be equal justice for all.
LOAD-DATE: September 5, 1999 
