THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 1983. LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION WITNESS DENNISON RAY, MEMBER, PROJECT ADVISORY GROUP EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Mr. DWYER. Mr. Dennison Ray, Project Advisory Group. Mr. Ray, we are on a very tight schedule, as you know. We will print your statement in the record and would ask that you summarize your statement. Mr. RAY. Thank you. I did not intend to attempt to read it. I will assume that you, in due course, will have read it. Being from Raleigh, North Carolina, I would be tempted to extoll the virtues of the North Carolina State Wolfpack, but I shall also avoid that temptation. Let me get to the heart of the matter. There are 45 million poor people, one-fifth of the nation's population, eligible for Legal Services, and suffering terrible injury through the legal process, and their legal problems are the worst since the Legal Services Program began. Mortgage foreclosures of new poor persons literally drive them into the streets because there is no public housing. The waiting list for public housing is five to nine years long. Employers find cause for terminating someone rather than simply laying them off, to avoid unemployment compensation. The newly poor are much heavier in debt, and so bankruptcies are on the rise. Repossessions are big-ticket items. Cars in North Carolina, mobile homes are self-help repossessed, because they are not real estate. Small farmers, especially blacks, are being literally driven off the face of the earth. They can't get loans from the Farmers Home Administration. They get foreclosed. Child abuse is on the rise. So is child custody by state action. Other social service agencies are investing their energies in keeping people off of eligibility rolls. We are finding fraud. Social Security disability cases: For example, in North Carolina we have experienced an 85 percent reversal rate of decisions to deny eligibility. Legal services programs are stretched tighter than a drumhead. We simply cannot respond to this need with present funding. We get $5.43 a year on the average to meet the legal needs of an eligible client, so if two of us had lunch today at McDonald's we would have exhausted the funding for a year, the only thing that stands between poor people and terrible devastating losses. The notion that Legal Services still provides nationwide coverage is meaningless, despite the representation of the Legal Services Corporation, as a practical matter. The fact that every county is assigned to some legal services program doesn't help a client reach an office that may be five counties away. Take North Carolina again, for instance. There are 26 offices in the state, 50,000 square miles, so the typical office has to serve virtually 2,000 square miles. Legal Services must rebuild. We propose that we begin doing so this year by an appropriation of $296 million. That would be the equivalent of restoring the dol lars lost in 1981, 1982, and under a conservative projection of 1983 to inflation, simply taking the Reagan budget message, cost-ofliving statement, as is. We also ask that that $296 million be the first step back to meeting the original congressional goal for Legal Services, which was minimum access, namely, two attorneys in Legal Services for every 10,000 poor persons. That is a goal that Congress supported for five years. We never did attain it. At present there are only four Legal Services programs in the entire nation that have funding which would allow them under the current attorney unit cost to provide two attorneys for every 10,000 poor persons. I would like to distribute a map-it was not part of our written testimony-which will demonstrate very visibly just how far we are from the original minimum access goal. The states in white, 18 of them, I believe, have funding for less than one attorney per 10,000 poor people. Most of the States in that light shade of gray have from 1 to 1. There is only one State, Alaska, which, as a State, has minimum access funding, and it because it is a statewide program and three other programs, two little dots there in California, the San Francisco program and the headquartes of California rural and a little dot in Des Moines, Iowa, are it. That is where minimum access has been achieved, nowhere else. [The map refered to above follows:] Mr. RAY. We have a hell of a long way to go. There are two other things I would like to ask of you. One is that Congress saw fit last December to protect field programs from potential destruction at the hands of an unconfirmed board of directors appointed by an Administration that has made clear it wishes the abolition of the Legal Services Corporation. Today the staff selected by that board is running the corporation, and we believe the potential threat is just as grave, if not more so, today. We would therefore ask that you attach language to the appropriation bill to assure that if we are fortunate enough to receive increased funding, that that funding be used for the intended purpose of rebuilding toward the goal of minimal access. Lastly, we ask that in the event that substantive issues, as they did in 1982, also become relevant to the appropriation, that you restore to Legal Services attorneys the capability to represent our clients as fully and in the same forums as private attorneys can represent theirs. I am addressing specifically the questions of administrative and legislative advocacy in class actions. Obviously it is proper to have procedures which assure professional judgments, and that we represent actual clients. I think it is most inappropriate that we be forbidden from representation in those forums, and certainly the legislative advocacy one presently does that, and yet it is one of the most cost-effective ways to go. We struggled for years in North Carolina to get the courts to declare under the common law that a tenant had the right to rent premises that were habitable, fit to live in. The courts refused to expand the common law concept. We went to the legislature, and we got a bill signed into law to enact a warranty of habitability. It saved hundreds of cases, thousands of dollars, and many years' frustration. That is all I came to say. Thank you very much. Mr. DWYER. Thank you very much, Mr. Ray. [The statement of Mr. Ray follows:] |