Luxury spending found in legal program

From AP:

Aug. 14, 2006, 2:53PM
Luxury spending found in legal program

By LARRY MARGASAK Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The federal program that provides legal help to poor Americans turns away half of its applicants for lack of resources. But that hasn't stopped its executives from lavishing expensive meals, chauffeur-driven cars and foreign trips on themselves.

Agency documents obtained by The Associated Press detail the luxuries that executives of the Legal Services Corp. have given themselves with federal money _ from $14 "Death by Chocolate" desserts to $400 chauffeured rides to locations within cab distance of their offices.

The government-funded corporation also has a spacious headquarters in Washington's tony Georgetown district _ with views of the Potomac River and a rent significantly higher than other tenants in the same building.

And board members wrote themselves a policy that doubled the amount they could claim for meals compared with their staff.

. . . .

Legal Services is a nonprofit corporation run with federal money that was created by Congress to provide legal help in civil matters for Americans who can't afford their own lawyers. It funds neighborhood clinics across the country where lawyers provide such help.

Three congressional committees have questioned the program's spending as has the corporation's own internal watchdog. The chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee is threatening to withhold future money if the corporation doesn't trim its extravagance.

"It's waste and abuse," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, citing the board's doubling of the meal money as an example. "At 200 percent, it seems to me what we would call in Iowa living high off the hog."

. . . .

The scrutiny of Legal Services' spending comes as the corporation says it doesn't have enough resources to meet many poor clients' needs.

Legal Services' own study found last October that for every client who receives service, one applicant is turned away for lack of resources. Since that study only counted those who contacted the program for assistance, the corporation said it likely underestimated the unmet need.

Sigh. The piece goes into further detail on just how extravagant the executives can be. The sad thing is that Legal Services Corporation's federal funding has remained virtually unchanged in actual dollars for about 25 years, with no adjustment for inflation. So if Congress wants to withhold funding, it'll hurt the indigent client base more than anyone else--whatever the LSC executives did, something tells me they'll be just fine . . .