Politics and Poverty

For five years the Legal Services Program of the Office of Economic Opportunity has championed the rights of the poor with one hand, while fending off attacks from local and state governments with the other. Now, Legal Services lawyers feel that they need a third hand to repel an assault from a new quarter: the OEO itself.

The latest challenge developed five months ago, when a senior OEO official announced a plan that threatened to take authority for funding and policy direction away from National Legal Services Director Terry Lenzner and parcel it out to OEO's 10 regional directors. All are political appointees, and only two are lawyers. Opposition to the plan quickly welled up among Legal Services' 2,000 salaried lawyers, most of them young activists. In addition, officers of the American Bar Association and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association deluged OEO Director Donald Rumsfeld with embarrassing questions.

Administrative Shuffle. The greatest fear is that decentralization would make Legal Services more vulnerable to pressure from city halls and statehouses. "When a difficult case comes up, like suing Governor Reagan," says one A.B.A. representative, "there's a tremendous amount of political pressure. A regional OEO director can't resist it the way an attorney can. And when a legal program has to start giving in to political pressure, you might just as well junk the whole program."

To many Legal Services supporters, the decentralization proposal is a new version of last year's attempt by the Senate to give Governors final veto power over local Legal Services programs. That plan was defeated in the House.

The present controversy smoldered more or less privately until the Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower and Poverty summoned OEO Director Rumsfeld to explain his intentions. Rumsfeld insisted that "regionalization" is merely an administrative shuffle, not an emasculation. He stressed that the independence of the Legal Services attorneys would not be impaired. Anyway, he added, the matter is still "an open question." Nevertheless, Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota produced a confidential memo from one of Rumsfeld's lieutenants treating decentralization as a virtual fait accompli and outlining procedures to carry it out. Rumsfeld denied that the memo contradicted his position.

Behind all the battling is the fact that many of the 850 neighborhood Legal Services offices are suing local and state government agencies on behalf of their indigent clients. At issue are legal rights to everything from welfare to public housing and health care. Such zeal prompted a regional OEO director's unsuccessful attempts to hold up funds for Chicago's Legal Services program until he could extract a promise not to sue the city. In addition, some Legal Services firebrands have alienated conservative elements in their communities of militants.

Poor and Pugnacious. Rather than repudiate such aggressiveness, Legal Services national headquarters encourages it. "We're telling them not to sit back behind their desks and wait for problems to come into their neighborhood offices," says National Director Lenzner.

Despite run-ins with government agencies and recent shortages of funds, Legal Services has doubled its case load, from 610,000 in 1969 to an estimated 1,200,000 next year. In 1971, the program is expected to reach 28% of the nation's poor, compared with 14% in 1969. Meanwhile, the cost per case to taxpayers has dropped from $75 to $59.

Largely because of its success, the program has been able to retain its independence. Until now, however, it enjoyed the active protection of its parent OEO. Rumsfeld says that he is not likely to decide on decentralization until he hears the results of a study by the National Advisory Council for his legal services later this month. He may further defer the matter until after the November elections. But Legal Services lawyers fear that they will soon, in the words of Terry Hatter Jr. of Los Angeles' Western Center on Law and Poverty, "end up handling nothing but divorces."

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