State slashes budget for legal services

Gov. David Paterson has announced his proposed New York State budget for fiscal year 2009-2010, which begins July 1. Among the list of regressive tax hikes and devastating cuts to almost every state service, from education to health care, is yet another proposed cut to the state’s paltry indigent legal services budget.

For the first time since 1995, the governor is proposing to cut the Aid to Indigent Defense fund—the general pot of money from which the state funds criminal legal services for the indigent. He proposes reducing the fund from $11.2 million to $9.8 million. The governor also threatens to eliminate some of the state’s specialized funding for certain defense programs, such as programs for clients with mental disabilities.

As for providers of civil legal services—those who defend the poor in housing court, at public benefits hearings and in many other critical matters—Paterson included no money in the executive budget for such services. This omission of civil legal service funding is, unfortunately, typical of past executive budgets.

Last year’s budget, however, did include a $1 million “place holder” for civil funding, which the legislature then reduced to $980,000. This year, no such place holder is included. The already struggling civil legal service organizations are left to fend for themselves with the legislature.

While not as monetarily staggering as some of the cuts proposed for education and health care, these new proposed cuts in legal services come on top of millions of dollars already taken out of the budgets of legal service organizations across the state in 2008. In New York City the Legal Aid Society, the state’s largest provider of criminal and civil legal services for the poor, has already endured more than $6 million in state and city cuts this past year.

Attorneys for the Legal Aid Society are already overwhelmed. Criminal lawyers’ average caseload already exceeds 100. Civil attorneys are forced to turn away six out of every seven people who seek their help. Both numbers are expected to increase drastically as the economic crisis deepens and more poor New Yorkers are arrested, evicted and denied public benefits.

Among the richest New Yorkers are most of the Wall Street bankers who are clearly responsible for state budget crises, as well as the national economic crisis. Instead of demanding that the bankers and other wealthy New Yorkers pay more in income taxes to solve the deficit they created, Paterson’s budget has placed the burden squarely on the shoulders of the most vulnerable.

Now, as more and more New Yorkers lose their jobs, can’t pay their rent and/or become police targets because they are poor, they will find no one to protect their rights in the legal system. The courts, already hostile institutions to any working or poor person, will become even more of an instrument of repression against them. The system will be able to have its way with them to a staggering degree.

The cuts, however, are not inevitable. They still must be passed by the legislature. The governor has asked the legislators to pass his budget in mid-March. This leaves time for workers to build a fightback struggle against the entire draconian budget.

The cuts hit almost every agency that provides any sort of support to working and oppressed people. The millions who will be affected can demand that the rich pay for the crisis—not the workers.