Hearing Evidence Highlights Shortfall in Funding of Legal Services for the Poor
A series of court-sponsored hearings completed last week disclosed dramatic evidence of a massive shortfall in spending to provide needed civil legal services for millions of poor New Yorkers- evidence the organizers hope to use in building support for their efforts to close the gap.
According to preliminary figures released by the courts’ recently created Task Force to Expand Access to Civil Legal Services in New York, the state spent only $3.68 last year for each of its low income residents to finance legal services, compared to an average of $23.51 for the neighboring states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
Victor A. Kovner, chairman of the Fund for Modern Courts, testified at one hearing that a survey conducted for the court system found that low income tenants residents had been forced to go without lawyers in confronting housing, finances, domestic relations, health insurance, immigration and other issues.
Extrapolating from the survey’s sample, Mr. Kovner estimated that almost 3 million low-income New Yorkers faced at least one legal problem last year without representation and that 1.2 million had three or more matters without access to counsel.
“Staggering numbers” responded Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, who presided over all the hearings, one in each of the Appellate Division’s four departments. “It is startling and it is also an enormous burden, not simply to those families but to all sorts of institutions throughout the state,” Mr. Kovner said.
The task force reported that civil legal representation for the poor last year provided $603.5 million in economic benefits and savings. For example, it estimated that poor New Yorkers with attorneys received $320.7 million through federal programs such as Social Security Disability and that nearly $100 million was saved by avoiding emergency shelter costs for people whose provided legal counsel were able to successfully fight eviction or foreclosure.
Judge Lipman said in an interview after the hearings that the state cannot hope to make up the huge shortfall revealed by the hearings all at once, but he vowed that the Judiciary’s proposed 2011-12 budget will initiate the process. “We recognize whatever the unmet needs are, it can’t be met in one year,” Judge Lippman said. “It’s got to be over a four-to-five year period”.
He said the task force will now combine data and anecdotal evidenced form the hearings as well as research it has been doing since late spring to define the problem and to make proposals for more reliable funding.
The cost to the state from inadequate legal services “is ultimately many times over the investment that should be made to fund legal services adequately”, Judge Lippman said.
The task force and the public hearings were Judge Lippman’s response to a joint resolution (J6368/K1621) approved earlier this year by each chamber of the Legislature. It asked the Judiciary for an updated, accurate accounting of the needs of civil legal aid services for the poor and how many people are not getting representation in civil matters (NYLJ, Sept. 29).
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman John Sampson and Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Helene Weinstein attended the final hearing by Judge Lippman’s panel in Brooklyn on Oct 7th. In addition to Judge Lippman, Chief Administrative Judge Ann Pfau, the four presiding justices of the Appellate Divisions and Stephen P. Younger, president of the New York State Bar Association, presided over the hearings.
Unlike criminal legal services, which are compulsory for indigent defendants under the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1963 ruling in Gideon v Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, poor parties in civil cases are not guaranteed representation. Judge Lippman said it was his goal to create a “Civil Gideon” in New York in the coming years.
Civil legal services are funded through some state and federal aid, grants by institutions, grants by individual legislators and the Interest on Lawyers’ Account fund. Because of the sour economy, IOLA funding to legal services providers has plunged from $32 million in 2008 to about $7 million in 2010 and 2011. The governor and Legislature applied some $15 million in higher fees and other court-related costs to fill some of the IOLA funding gap this year, but the money is not guaranteed to go to civil legal services again in the 2011-12 budget.
Useful links
Transcripts from the hearings can be found here: http://www.nycourts.gov/ip/access-civil-legal-services/public-hearings.shtml
Gideon v Wainwright on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_v._Wainwright
No comments:
Post a Comment