An Organization at War with Itself

By Michael S. Serrill

Legal Services rifles its files and ruffles some feathers

"It's a grudge, a vendetta. It's his dark, Darth Vader side," says Alberto Saldamando, executive director of California Rural Legal Assistance. Of all the social programs growing out of the Great Society, there is none that Ronald Reagan dislikes more than the Legal Services Corporation, an independent organization that channels federal funds to legal aid lawyers for the poor in civil cases. Reagan's animosity dates from the late '60s when as Governor of California he was unable to restrict some state social programs because of legal aid lawsuits. Even after it became clear two years ago that a bipartisan congressional majority was going to protect Legal Services, Administration officials continued their assault. Now, with Reagan appointees at the top, a new phase in the conflict has opened. The LSC is at war with itself.

It heated up two months ago when Legal Services President Donald Bogard ordered a bizarre set of "raids" on his own regional offices in search of material showing questionable practices by his predecessors. That effort struck pay dirt with the release last week of a preliminary report from the General Accounting Office, alleging that some former Legal Services officials and grant recipients violated LSC's prohibition on using funds for political organizing. The GAO, which is the investigative arm of Congress, based its 16-page report principally on a January 1981 meeting in Boulder, Colo., attended by top Legal Services officials. The report notes that Alan Houseman, then head of LSC'S research institute, along with other speakers, advocated a massive lobbying effort to save Legal Services.

Former Legal Services officials deny that this call to political action violated LSC rules. They charge that the GAO report and other investigations are nothing more than a collateral attack on the program's existence. LSC President Bogard, who took over the agency last December, warns ominously that the apparent past abuses "could very well have an adverse effect on the continuation of the corporation."

The report provides fresh ammunition for Legal Services critics, who will again try to cut back the program in the current session of Congress. The LSC received $241 million for this fiscal year, down from its $321 million peak during fiscal 1981.

Although he denies being part of a Reagan wrecking crew, Bogard knows that others in the organization do not agree. A recent memo from two of his deputies ordered regional staffers not to have any contact with elected officials or the press. The latest source of indignation in the ranks is a set of proposed new regulations that could make millions of poor people, many of them elderly, ineligible for free legal assistance. The pending rules could disqualify those with more than $15,000 equity in a home or $4,500 in a car. They would also assume that a household's assets are the assets of any person residing there, including elderly parents living with their children, retarded people living with relatives, and battered wives living at home.

Says Robert Lehrer of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago: "The newly unemployed who lost their jobs under this Administration's policies have been flooding our offices for help in getting disability benefits. Now they will be ineligible for that help." John Barrett, executive director of the Legal Services Corporation of Iowa, notes that poor farmers and the elderly in his state may not be able to get legal services under the new rules. "Some of these people paid maybe $8,000 for their homes in the '40s," he says, "and simply due to inflation those homes are worth enough today to disqualify them. And these are pretty awful homes."

Even before the proposal of the new rules, legal aid attorneys across the country were thoroughly demoralized. "Every thing is an emergency," says Los Angeles' Elena Ackel. "There were 33 messages on my on desk today,and all of them had'urgent' on them." The numberof Legal Services-funded lawyers has declined from a high of 6,337 in 1981 to 4,791 today. The 326 organizations that receive LSC grants have had to close more than 300 of the 1,475 offices they operated two years ago. Those who are able to make their way to a legal aid office are often turned away. The attorneys are too overworked to handle many of the divorce and child-custody cases, landlord-tenant disputes and other routine problems that are the bulk of their work.

And there is little time to do what the Administration most dislikes --attack Government policies. California legal aid lawyers, once notorious for their class-action suits on behalf of the poor, this year managed to bring just one major case. But that action could end up overturning a major Administration effort to reduce the cost of entitlement programs; the suit challenges the Social Security Administration's right to discontinue disability payments without first showing that a recipient's medical condition has improved.

Even some supporters of LSC concede that such zeal on behalf of clients has sometimes turned into excessive zeal on behalf of causes. But even some critics argue that the improprieties do not justify the Reagan efforts. Says Gerald Caplan, a law professor at George Washington University who served as LSC's president for six months last year: "A lot of attorneys there deserve credit for working under the most adverse circumstances, which is noble. But they were also some of the most contentious, self-righteous people I've ever met. They need containing, but not dismemberment." -- By Michael S. Serrill. Reported by David S. Jackson/Washington, with other bureaus

With reporting by David S. Jackson This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.