Since 1995, NLPC has alleged that the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) exaggerates the amount of help it gives to the poor. NLPC has now helped expose information, kept secret by LSC, that proves this allegation to be spectacularly true.
This year, LSC is receiving $300 million in taxpayer money to fund 269 local programs which are supposed to provide legal help to poor people with civil, non-criminal problems. The $300 million represents an increase of $17 million over 1998.
The increase, approved by Congress on October 21, 1998, followed dramatic pleas by LSC President John McKay that LSC-funded programs could not keep up with the demand. LSC submitted to Congress a 1998 “Fact Book & Program Information” which claimed the total number of cases nationwide in 1997 was 1,932,613. McKay said, “We think this publication provides overwhelming documentation of LSC’s success in achieving its mission and we hope that it will build further support for the program in Congress and among the public.”
Inflated Caseload
As it turns out, the LSC figure for total cases
was grossly inflated. Furthermore, McKay and other LSC officials were aware of
this fact before the Congressional vote but did not disclose it to Congress.
The scandal has its roots in examinations done by the LSC Inspector General of 1997 records for six programs, located in Northern Virginia, Miami, rural Florida, Houston, San Diego and San Francisco. Of the 148,989 cases reported for 1997, only 50,235 were real. The programs had tripled their actual caseload.
The numbers were cooked in a variety of ways. For instance, the San Diego program counted 14,000 phone calls handled by non-lawyers as “cases.” The rural Florida program blamed a “computer error” for 5,500 cases becoming 44,993.
Incriminating Email
Strong evidence has come to light that this
information was deliberately concealed by LSC officials. An e-mail from LSC
Inspector General Edouard Quatrevaux to members of his staff read, “You are
correct in that the numbers provided to Congress were inaccurate...I urged LSC
Presdient McKay to focus on getting the 98 data as clean as possible rather than
going back to re-do 1997. He agreeed[sic].”
The Inspector General Act requires Inspector Generals to keep Congress “currently informed of fraud, abuses and deficiencies” through “semi-annual reports and other means.” Quatrevaux’s report covering April 1 to September 30, 1998 did not even mention the case overcounting.
Deception Unravels
The information did not stay secret for long.
Documents found their way to the offices of Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa), a member
of the Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over LSC. During a
hearing on March 3, Latham quizzed LSC Chairman Douglas Eakeley, who was Bill
Clinton’s Yale roommate. True to his Clintonite form, Eakeley referred to the
Northern Virginia program but volunteered nothing about the rest, not knowing
what information Latham had.
Latham asked questions about the other programs and then unloaded on Eakeley, “As we are in the process of appropriating dollars, and we are seeing up to two-thirds of the cases-- I don’t know how much nationwide are bogus cases...It’s hard to believe that we can appropriate dollars in an honest way knowing that the information is not true that we are given.”
Scandal Erupts
Documents also found their way to NLPC, which provided them to
Associated Press reporter Karen Gullo. Her April 8 piece was carried by
newspapers all over the country including USA Today, Washington Post, Washington
Times, Miami Herald, New York Newsday, Atlanta Constitution, Seattle
Post-Intelligencer and Boston Globe.
Anti-LSC editorials appeared in newspapers including New York Post, San Diego Union-Tribune, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Boston Herald, and Tampa Tribune. Investor’s Business Daily published an opinion article by NLPC Chairman Ken Boehm on May 28 entitled, “The Legal Services Fraud.”
The phony figures were the subject of commentary by Rush Limbaugh on May 10. Kate O’Beirne used it as her “Outrage of the Week” on CNN’s Capital Gang on April 24. It was even the topic of liberal Charles Osgood’s “Osgood File” on the CBS Radio Network on April 8.
On Capitol Hill, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.) and other members have circulated a series of blistering “Dear Colleague” letters. On May 3, Armey successfully asked for a General Accounting Office (GAO) audit of additional LSC grantees.
False Reporting Widespread
The preliminary results of the GAO
audits confirm widespread case inflation by LSC grantees. On June 25, the
GAO reported that the LSC grantees in New York, Puerto Rico, Chicago, Los
Angeles and Baltimore reported a total of 221,000 cases, of which 75,000 are
questionable.
EW