New Haven Independent

Budget Fallout Hits Legal Aid

by Melissa Bailey | October 8, 2009 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Pat Kaplan was about to post an opening for a staff attorney when she heard about the governor’s veto.

Kaplan (pictured) is head of New Haven Legal Assistance Association, Inc., which provides free legal services to people who can’t afford a lawyer. The organization, which took a blow to its budget when the recession hit, was counting on a $1.5 million lifeline from the state toward legal aid’s statewide umbrella group.

On Monday, that money fell prey to a Rell veto.

Kaplan doesn’t know what will happen next.

She recounted her organization’s roller-coaster ride over the past year, and the last week, as it sought new funding to support its work. New Haven Legal Assistance serves 21 towns in the Greater New Haven area, covering about 19 percent of the state’s poverty population. The agency gives free legal help to people who are facing domestic abuse and foreclosure, among other urgent challenges.

The organization took a hit in 2009, when a stock market crash decimated its main source of funding, a program called IOLTA, for Interest On Lawyers’ Trust Accounts. As a 50 percent drop in IOLTA funds loomed, three secretaries were laid off. The three most junior attorneys left the staff because they “saw the writing on the wall,” Kaplan said. To avoid layoffs, attorneys and management voluntarily took a 20 percent pay cut for the first six months of 2009.

As a result of that episode, New Haven legal aid’s staff shrank from 32 to 23.

“We’re really slim on resources,” Kaplan said. That means the group now has only nine to 10 attorneys, and has to turn away a lot more clients.

To help legal aid dig out, the state legislature, including New Haven State Sens. Toni Harp and Martin Looney and East Haven State Rep. Mike Lawlor, fought for a new source of funding. They championed a hike in court filing fees that took effect July 1. The money will be delivered quarterly to legal aid groups statewide, disbursed through the Connecticut Bar Foundation, Kaplan said.

The revenue from filing fees will likely give the group a big boost, Kaplan calculated. First-quarter earnings are soon to be distributed, and may tally as much as $7 million, she said. New Haven’s legal aid gets 17 percent of that pie. The group’s operating budget is $3.1 million.

As she awaits news on how much those filing fees will total, Kaplan has been following another funding battle. This one concerns a line item in the state judiciary budget for legal aid services that was instituted three years ago. This year, the Democrats sought to hike that figure from $1 million to $1.5 million.

New Haven legal aid’s portion would be $255,000 per year for two years, Kaplan said.

The promise of those three funding sources — IOLTA, filing fees and the line item — led Kaplan’s organization to a place of confidence.

Last week, the odds looked good: A government “implementer” bill containing the $1.5 million appropriation passed 19 to 14 in the Senate and 96 to 35 in the House. On Thursday, Kaplan’s board decided that legal aid would be in good enough shape to start rebuilding a thinned-out staff. The board made a decision to finally hire another attorney to replenish the staff.

Before the organization posted for the job, however, it got bad news from the state.

On Friday, Kaplan learned that Rell was planning to veto the implementer bill. Legal aid’s line item was part of a clause that would exempt the judiciary budget from across-the-board cuts.

Rell followed through on the veto on Monday, leaving legal aid in the lurch.

In a veto message, the governor argued that the implementer bill was too costly. She wrote that she does not approve of exempting the judiciary budget from the cuts.

“We can ill afford to provide blanket exceptions to budget cuts from one branch of government while others are asked to shoulder their fair share of the burden,” Rell wrote.

Sen. Looney, a long-time legal aid supporter, did not sound optimistic in a message delivered Wednesday through a press spokesman.

“The Senate Majority leader feels that is very unfortunate that Gov. Rell vetoed the bill. As much he would like to override the governor’s veto, the votes aren’t there in the Senate. Sen. Looney will continue to push for adequate funding for legal aid but it is likely that there will be fallout from Gov. Rell’s ill-advised veto.”

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Comments

Posted by: Steve Eppler-Epstein | October 8, 2009 9:19 PM

A couple more things that make this so important:
1) Even with the help from the state that is now at risk, legal aid programs are down almost $4 million in funding.
2) The services are needed more than ever with so many people seeing the impact of foreclosure, loss of jobs, and domestic violence. And our work for the elderly has grown in importance as family resources are stretched.

Posted by: Fedupwithliberals | October 9, 2009 4:11 AM

Maybe this will cut down on nuisance suits that the poor use to harass middle class people who also cannot afford the average $350/hr attorney, have no free legal defemse options and pay out of pocket which means they have to knuckle under quickly due to the threat of financial ruin by aggressive lawyers trying to make a buck or push an agenda.

Posted by: Bob Solomon | October 9, 2009 10:49 AM

yes, FedUp -

like those poor banks illegally dispossessing tenants and owners, or those misunderstood domestic violence perpetrators, or the Social Security system knuckling under because they can't afford an attorney. Should I go on? The problem, FedUp, is that you sit there writing without facts, which is a lot easier when you don't have the courage to use your name.

Posted by: to bob | October 9, 2009 7:38 PM

I'm with Looney and Epstein et al, and find fed up's posts dull usually, but he has one point here - new haven and hartford are crawling with con artists with no shortage of lawyers willing to shake down insurers and disrupt the lives of unsuspecting victims.

Connecticut's insurance fraud bureau focuses solely on worker's comp - that's its mission.

In states that have expanded their bureaus to go after fraudsters, (Mass for example) the savings have been huge- millions of dollars. It is worth it. These people clog the courts, literally clog them with bogus lawsuits that basically extort nuisance settlements from insurers and mess up the lives of those they accuse. They also tend to commit other crimes as well.

They strain and abuse every single source of institutional handouts they can find.

Of course, this has nothing to do with legal aid, which does not take these sorts of cases. It does have to do with financial drains on communities, institutions, courts and overall consumer costs.

Posted by: to fed up | October 9, 2009 7:46 PM

To fed up - one thing you don't realize is that the more funding legal aid organizations have, the greater the possibility they can offer services to people with higher incomes, but still too low to afford lawyers. I agree it is exhorbitant for middle class households to pay for lawyers, prohibitive even.

The federal poverty line is below the actual poverty line. Everyone knows that. When funding is good, organizations can try to raise the income cut off for their services.

It seems to me legal aid organizations used to offer more services back in the 70s.

Posted by: Fedupwithliberals | October 10, 2009 5:54 AM

Thanks for putting me in my place Bob! Can you please give me those set of facts to substantiate your high horse position? I'd like to see a copy of their case lists to see what percentage of lawsuits involve suing greedy bankers or heartless landlords who are enforcing a simple contract, or big government trampling on human rights.

Posted by: Reality | October 10, 2009 4:07 PM

FedUP, etc:

Dudes, good news. Legal aid brings very few affirmative cases that "clog up the courts." Mostly, they defend tenants in suits brought by landlords, advocate for disabled people in social services and with social security, help people get divorced and get temporary restraining orders against abusive partners.

And guess what: middle class is the new poor, and they're both just different parts of the working class, that's your problem, not legal aid lawyers.

Posted by: Fedupwithliberals | October 10, 2009 8:59 PM

Hmmmm! Middle class is the new poor!? Could it be that I am now elegible for subsidized waterfront property, complete with granite countertops and free utilities? I have to rethink this socialist thing!

Posted by: THREEFIFTHS | October 11, 2009 12:17 AM

Fedupwithliberals

He is a case right from the NHI.
http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2009/10/new_foreclosure.php

Posted by: THREEFIFTHS | October 11, 2009 12:32 AM

Fedupwithliberals
This is the reason why we have legal Aid. and you can blame the liberals.
http://eca.state.gov/education/engteaching/pubs/AmLnC/br67.htm

http://library.thinkquest.org/11572/cc/cases/gideon.html

Posted by: Fedupwithliberals | October 12, 2009 6:08 AM

THREEFIFTHS

Thanks for showing me the NHI article on the family's foreclosure story. While I can empathize with their situation, the unintendeded consequence of this Obama law is that no one will buy investment property if they have no control over the tenant population of the building. That means that more buildings will be bank owned and poorly maintained. Thanks to current laws, it almost takes an act of congress to evict tenants who are delinquent in rent which, by agreement, terminates the lease. Put a child in the mix, and you may as well just hand the keys over to the bank and walk away. Sorry my friend, but landlords already are at a disadvantage.

In your second posting, please do not misconstrue my comments to mean that I do not want the poor to be represented. In recent times, Law has turned from a noble pursuit of justice into a money making shakedown operation. When you have a population of attorneys looking for billable hours and deep pockets to pick to keep the practice going, it becomes a completely unfair situation when one side has no financial investment required to bring suit against another who has to pay out of pocket to defend themselves. There should be a significant pro rated charge to apply to the underprivileged which equals the same point of pain that a working class stiff feels when he gets that notice from a marshall. Just because you may technically own a home and have assets does not mean you have gobs of disposable income to blow on attorneys fees to defend yourself against a disgruntled poor person who has Legal Aid and an agenda behind them. There has to be a better way.

Posted by: THREEFIFTHS | October 12, 2009 8:45 PM

FEDUPWITHLIBERALS
To answer your question,My family are landlords and do we have tennts who becuase of job loss get behind in there rent and we some times do have to evict them and from what I have seen in housing court, we have got them out in sixty days.Not in all cases are the landlords at a disadvantage.
Second you say that the attorneys who are making
money,It is the whole Court system that is making money.Look at the state marshal system who get work from the attorneys to server papers on the tenants.Last if you think that landlords are at a disadvantage check this.http://www.nydailynews.com/real_estate/2009/08/16/2009-08-16_slumlords_get_to_share_stimulus_pot_worth_81m_they_own_some_of_citys_most_hazard.html
And I bet it being done right in this state.

Posted by: For Safe City | October 13, 2009 11:37 PM

Fed up sounds like you really feel sorry for the banks, do you have stock in AIG?

Budget Fallout Hits Legal Aid

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