WASHINGTON, JULY 27, 1999-The Legal Services Corporation (LSC),
the quasi-federal agency that supplies free legal aid to low-income
litigants nationwide, is a case study in what happens when agencies
operate without sufficient congressional oversight, a new
Heritage Foundation paper says.
The LSC, which has provided $6 billion in legal aid to the
eligible poor since 1974, issues grants to more than 260 local
legal-aid programs across the country. Even though government
audits show that the LSC is guilty of inflating the number of poor
clients it serves, the agency has requested a $40 million increase
over last year's budget to bring its total funding to $340
million.
So far, Congress has declined to go along, perhaps in part
because the audits have shown that just over half of the LSC's
reported caseload-198,000 out of 370,000 cases-can be considered
valid, according to Heritage Senior Fellow in Government Studies
Virginia L. Thomas and researcher Ryan H. Rogers.
"Offices overstated the number of cases handled, either because
the cases were ineligible to be counted in the first place or
because a case was counted more than once," the analysts say. "In
other instances, the statistics were inflated because telephone
contacts and nonexistent cases were included in the numbers." The
audits have shown that non-LSC-funded cases were counted as
well.
Worse, LSC leaders were informed of these discrepancies a year
ago and failed to report them to Congress until March 1999. In the
intervening months, Congress approved a $17 million increase in
agency funding.
Among the examples of potential fraud cited by Thomas and
Rogers:
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The Legal Aid Society of San Diego
claimed it closed 33,096 cases for 1997, but an audit revealed only
10,787 of these cases were legitimate.
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Florida Rural Legal Services
admitted last year that 39,471 of the cases it reported were
invalid, dropping the number of legitimate cases from 53,393 to
13,922.
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Legal Services of Miami claimed to
have closed 23,800 cases. An audit showed only 7,607 were
resolved.
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A recent U.S. General Accounting
Office (GAO) report found that of the 27,961 cases reported by the
LSC office in Los Angeles, only 20,017 were valid.
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The GAO also found that 34,565 of
the 53,262 cases reported by the LSC office in Baltimore were
improperly counted.
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Of the 16,490 cases reported by the
San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation, about
one-quarter-4,134-were valid. In a December 1998 letter to the LSC,
the local director was forced to admit the figures had been
inflated.
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The Houston office claimed 13,695
legitimate cases, but an audit found only 9,995.
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Legal Services of Northern Virginia
reported 9,115 cases; only 5,156 were deemed valid.
Congress should phase out the LSC and turn the legal-aid funds
over to the states to administer directly, Thomas and Rogers write.
At the very least, Congress should revamp audit and reporting
standards and deny additional funding requests until accurate case
figures become available, they say.
"No one would deny that the less privileged in society benefit
significantly from free legal assistance," the analysts write. "But
it is entirely unacceptable for Congress or the states to continue
to disburse taxpayer funds to LSC programs without considering
credible or accurate information on how current money is being
spent."