The 2011 Major League Baseball season began yesterday, and the Glorious Philadelphia Phillies Baseball Franchise opens its season today.  Alas, the PSLawNet Blog’s dream of securing the world’s easiest job – the fifth man in the Phillies rotation – has not come to pass.  So here we sit at the NALP office, plugging away at the Public Interest Law News Bulletin – until a very, very long lunch break at about, oh, 1:05pm EDT.

Speaking of the Bulletin, here’s what we’ve got: prospects bleak for legal services funding from the New York legislature; news about state/local government revenues across the nation is mixed, at best; news about indigent defense reform in New York is not mixed, it’s bad; meet the federal official who’s responsible to recruit and retain the next generation of civil servants; workplace discrimination hits low-income women hardest, according to a new report; cash bonuses for convictions in a Colorado prosecutor’s office?; just say no to boosting attorney registration fees to support legal aid; legal services funding shortages may kill a popular Florida disability advocacy project; some great public interest funding news at UVA Law; a constitutional showdown in Washington State pits legal services advocates against budget-cutting state officials.

• 3.31.11 – well, we should have known it would be a tough row to hoe.  New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman has been a vocal, and active, advocate for bolstering civil legal services during a time of tremendous client need.  In addition to creating an Attorney Emeritus Program to make it easy for retired lawyers to do pro bono, he has been pushing hard for state funding to beef up the legal services infrastructure.  Well, New York state legislators are working away at a final budget proposal, and things are looking bleak for funding.  From the New York Law Journal:  “Lippman has aggressively sought an additional $25 million for civil legal services in the fiscal year beginning tomorrow, the first installment in a four-year $100 million increase. But that was thrown into doubt by a budget agreement Sunday that slashed another $70 million on top of an earlier $100 million Judge Lippman had offered in the Judiciary’s proposed budget….  Judge Lippman, who had said Monday that the budget cuts could mean “hundreds” of nonjudicial layoffs, declined to discuss specific cost-saving measures under consideration by court administrators. However, it is unlikely that the full $25 million would be available for civil legal services.”

• 3.29.11 – the PSLawNet Blog has frequently covered job cuts affecting state and local government lawyers in the recession’s wake.  Some new census data show how state and local governments are faring in terms of fiscal health.  Short version: some immediate good news, but a lot of uncertainty in the longer term.  From the Washington Post: “State and local tax revenues grew during the last three months of 2010, continuing a recovery from the steep drops that followed the recession, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.  Despite the modest revenue growth, state and local governments are contending with huge budget gaps that have led to service cuts and reductions in pay and rights for public employees…. Though the recovery in state revenues is good news for state and local governments, it has not been sufficient to compensate for the huge revenue losses caused by the recession. States also are coping with fast-increasing costs for Medicaid and higher education, while they are bracing for the loss of about $50 billion in federal stimulus money in the coming budget year.”

• 3.29.11 – the North Country Gazette reports on some bad news for indigent defense funding in the Empire State:  “The just-announced State budget deal cuts funding for the Office of Indigent Legal Services in half according to the Justice Fund.  ‘This ill advised compromise cut threatens to gut reform before it begins,’ lamented Edward Nowak, chair of the Justice Fund board. ‘The injustices resulting from New York State’s failure to fulfill its duty to provide adequate representation to people charged with crime or threatened with loss of their children have gone on too long,’ he added.”  According to the story, New York State has historically farmed out indigent defense responsibilities to its counties, leaving a patchwork system filled with qualitative inconsistencies.  The Office of Indigent Legal Services is part of a recent effort to put the state’s weight behind indigent defense reform.  But due to the funding cut, it’s now a smaller part.

• 3.29.11 – the Washington Post’s “Federal Player of the Week” is a woman whose work will affect hundreds and hundreds of law students who aspire to federal government careers: “Juanita Wheeler has a big job ahead of her.  In December, President Obama issued an executive order that called for reforming the way our government recruits and hires student interns and recent graduates. Wheeler’s task now is to set up the new processes that federal agencies will use to bring young talent into the federal fold….  As head of federal student programs at the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM), Wheeler oversees the intern and student hiring and recruiting under the newly created ‘Pathways Program’ She also helps manage the Presidential Management Fellows Program, a two-year leadership development initiative for entry level individuals with advanced degrees, now operating in approximately 80 agencies.”

• 3.29.11 – a National Law Journal article looks at a new report on the issue of low-income women suffering from workplace discrimination: “Discrimination lawsuits brought by working professionals tend to draw public attention, but it’s low-wage workers who suffer the harshest consequences in those circumstances, according to a report by the Center for WorkLife Law at University of California Hastings College of the Law.  The report, titled ‘Poor, Pregnant, and Fired: Caregiver Discrimination Against Low-Wage Workers,’ analyses [sic] 50 workplace discrimination lawsuits — most resolved during the past five years — brought by low-wage workers. It highlights ways in which employers violate workers’ rights.”

• 3.29.11 – we blogged earlier this week about an interesting story coming out of the Denver suburbs: a controversy is brewing about a county prosecutor’s past policy of awarding financial bonuses which were tied in part to her prosecutors’ successes in getting convictions at trial.  The concern is that pinning a financial award to winning in court may motivate a prosecuting attorney to forgo plea deals in order to secure more convictions.  It could essentially give a prosecuting attorney a financial interest in the cases they handle.  Most recently, a public defender moved to have a prosecutor working for District Attorney Carol Chambers removed from a case on account of concerns about a financial conflict.  Here’s some coverage:
  • a 3.29.11 Denver Post article covers the motion: “A motion questioning an Arapahoe County prosecutor’s ability to try a felony kidnapping case in light of District Attorney Carol Chambers’ controversial bonus criteria survived its first hearing Monday.  Eighteenth Judicial District Court Judge Carlos Samour Jr. gave the defense more time to subpoena documents from Chambers’ office detailing the bonuses paid last year that rewarded felony prosecutors who tried at least five cases and won conviction in 70 percent of them.”  Chambers disputes the notion that her prosecutors have financial stakes in cases and noted that budget constraints will prevent any future bonus awards anyway.  (The bonuses totaled over $164,000 in 2010 and averaged $1100 for felony prosecutors.)
  • 3.25.11 – here’s some earlier coverage, including  a video story, from Denver-based TV station KUSA.  In it, Chambers is adamant in defending of the bonuses, noting that they were offered not just to trial lawyers but also to support staff.  She also argues that courtroom success was but one criterion in the bonus calculations, and that attorneys did not know it was a criterion at all.

• 3.28.11 – on the Minnesota Lawyer’s “J.D. Rising” blog, a former legal services attorney opposes the state high court’s order for a $100 increase in attorney registration fees that will channel funds to the Board of Public Defense and the Legal Services Planning Committee.  While the need for additional funding in both the criminal and civil legal aid communities is obvious, writes Leah Weaver, she believes that cobbling together funding via the fee increase takes some of the burden off of the parties who should carry it.  “I am opposed to the fee increase because I believe it gives the Governor and the Legislature a pass on dealing with the real crisis facing our courts. As Justice Stras wrote in his [concurring opinion re the court’s fee increase order], ‘it is not the responsibility of lawyers alone to disproportionately fund a core, constitutionally-mandated service of government through a fee that was designed solely to regulate our profession.’ But by extending the fee increase, the Court allows Governor Dayton and the Legislature to continue not to make court funding a priority.”

• 3.28.11 – the Florida Times-Union reports that funding shortfalls at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid threaten a path-breaking project that provides advocacy for the hearing impaired.  Sharon Caserta, a Class-of-2005 Equal Justice Works Fellow now working as a staff attorney at JALA, “has become recognized as a trailblazer statewide for protecting the rights of the deaf and hard of hearing.  Trouble is brewing, though. The career Caserta sprouted five years ago…could be fading away as funding becomes scarce. The prospect has…Legal Aid Executive Director Michael Figgins and Florida Association of the Deaf President June McMahon bracing themselves.  Figgins said the program costs $150,000 annually, but this year Legal Aid has come up $75,000 short. The biggest part of the problem, he said, is the Florida Bar Foundation’s trust accounts are still struggling from the recession.”

• 3.28.11 – the Daily Progress reports on UVA Law’s use of some legal services grant funding: “The University of Virginia School of Law will use a $150,000 grant to help provide legal services to the region’s poor.  The grant from the Jessie Ball DuPont Fund will be used to develop the Access to Justice Partnership, which officials hope will ultimately draw on pro bono services from roughly 75 private attorneys and about as many law students annually.  Law school officials will collaborate with the local bar, the Legal Aid Justice Center and the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society.”  This isn’t the only public interest funding news from UVA Law.  Earlier this week we blogged that the school’s Public Interest Law Association raised over $375,000 to fund summer public interest work for rising 2 and 3Ls.

• 3.27.11 – a constitutional showdown about the fate of a state-funded food stamp program could portend many battles between public interest lawyers and state governments as the latter push to shrink budget deficits by cutting social services.  The Seattle Post Intelligencer reports that Columbia Legal Services is leading the charge to stop Washington State from discontinuing the Food Assistance for Legal Immigrants (FAP) program.  Here’s the posture of the federal class-action litigation: “[A federal judge] on Tuesday denied the state’s request that she reconsider her preliminary injunction last month forcing the state Department of Social and Health Services to fully restore…FAP. The program, which had been cut on Jan. 31, serves more than 10,300 households and provides benefits to immigrants who are ineligible for federal food stamps.  The state had hoped to save an estimated $7.2 million for the remainder of the current biennium and about $60.5 million for the next one by terminating the FAP.  But [the court] found that by cutting off food assistance to a certain class of legal immigrants while continuing to operate and partially fund the federal food assistance program – which serves some immigrants – the state may be in violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.”  The facts driving this case are a bit nuanced, but as noted in the article a similar federal case originated in Hawaii last year.  And it’s our bet that, as state governments leave no stones unturned in looking to cut expenses, we’ll see more such actions filed by legal services providers elsewhere in the U.S.