Copyright 1999 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
The
Plain Dealer
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April 13, 1999 Tuesday, FINAL / ALL
SECTION: EDITORIALS & FORUM; Pg. 8B
LENGTH: 427 words
HEADLINE:
GIVE OR TAKE A FEW MILLION;
LEGAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION'S CAREFREE WAYS
WITH FACTS AND FIGURES REMAIN A PROBLEM
BODY:
Federal programs that spend millions in often controversial ways should be
extra careful about accounting for that funding. The Legal Services Corp. was
not, so it's in trouble again.
A quasi-government agency, the LSC was
criticized for years for exceeding its congressional mandate to provide funding
to local agencies for free legal assistance in civil matters to the poor. In the
last few years, Congress has prohibited use of federal funding for LSC
class-action suits on redistricting, welfare
reform and other disputes; arguably, they constitute
taxpayer-financed political activism rather than the agency's intended concern:
legal assistance on individual needs such as leases, wills and domestic matters.
Congress has also been known to whack LSC's funds, though its 1999 budget of
$300 million is hardly peanuts, up $17 million from 1998. The problem now:
Though its funding is up, the LSC's caseload probably is down - if all caseload
figures are accurately reported, which the 1997 statistics were not. Why,
critics reasonably ask, give more funds to an agency that cannot or will not
correctly account for funds already spent?
According to its inspector
general, the caseload statistics the LSC obtains from its funding recipients
nationwide play a large part in budget allocation and performance evaluation.
But in close looks at only five of its 269 affiliated agencies nationwide (none
of the five in Ohio), those statistics for 1997 - number of cases closed,
eligible people served, etc. - were off by at least 90,000 cases. The
corporation anticipates that with a proper count, the 1998 numbers will drop at
least 200,000 from 1997's 1.93 million.
In listing some 15,000 telephone
calls as closed cases, for example, the San Diego program overstated that
category by 68 percent. It also failed to determine callers' eligibility for its
services. The Lakeland, Fla., program reported some 45,000 new cases, though the
actual number was about 5,500. Computer error, it claims.
How to
calculate the numbers of clients and cases has been a source of some confusion.
But even after clarification, some local organizations continued to report
inflated numbers.
That's no way to make the case for additional funding.
In fact, it's a good way to make the case of longtime critics that the Legal
Services Corp. has an inflated estimation of its scope, authority and support
that only deflating its funding can fix. It's up to the agency to make the
opposite case - without expanding its writ beyond the law or its statistics
beyond reality.
COLUMN: EDITORIALS
LOAD-DATE: April 14, 1999 
