Just received this email from MetroWest Legal Services, which “provides free legal aid to low-income people who would be denied justice without our help”:
The House Ways & Means Budget is Proposing a $1 Million Cut in Funding For Civil Legal Aid.Yesterday, the House Ways & Means Committee released its budget recommendations for Fiscal Year 2014 and allocated only $11 million for the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation (MLAC) which is a major funder of MetroWest Legal Services. That’s $4.5 million less than what we asked for and $1 million less than last year.This proposed cut will result in even fewer eligible people that the state’s legal services programs can help. In these difficult times, MLAC-funded legal aid programs like ours are more important than ever-and we are already struggling to stay open with less than two-thirds the attorneys and approximately half the MLAC funding we had in FY08. Any further cuts will devastate us.How You Can Help I would ask you to take a few minutes to call your local State Representative and ask him or her to co-sponsor Rep. Balser’s budget amendment to fund MLAC at $15.5 million and communicate their support for the amendment to Speaker DeLeo and Chairman Dempsey. Refer to budget line item # 0321-1600 – Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation. If you don’t know who your legislator is, go to www.mass.govand click on Legislature and then then on “by city or town” to find your your legislators.
The funding amount provided in Rep. Balser’s amendment will help civil legal services programs serve the Commonwealth’s poorest residents.
Thank you for supporting MWLS and helping us to help those most in need. Your call will only take a minute but can make a huge difference.
Sincerely,Betsy Soule
Executive Director
Note that the funding to be reduced would be for Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation (MLAC), which is statewide. This is not just a MetroWest issue.
The proposal represents about an 8% cut in MLAC’s state funding from this year’s level, and would reduce the capacity of MLAC – and the regional legal services organizations it supports financially – to provide civil representation for our poorest citizens. Since FY 2008 MLAC’s revenue from interest on attorney IOLTA accounts is down 78% and, as a result, despite squeezing dollars as far as they can go, its funding to local legal aid organizations like MetroWest Legal Services is down 54%. This latest cut would be devastating.
Rep. Ruth Balser, of the district next to mine in Newton, has proposed an amendment to fund MLAC at the requested amount of $15.5 million for FY 2014. Please mention support for Rep. Balser’s amendment, as referenced above (Line Item No. 0321-1600), in your calls to legislators.
This budget battle is about our trains and roads and schools. It’s also about things like this, which affect people’s lives.
Senate is reportedly reaching a deal that Gov can support. I don’t know how much I trust whatever is fit to print in a Boston Globe blog. But I do know that we should continue to call Senators, especially the known progressives, and congratulate them for hanging in and fighting, and giving them encouragement to stick with it, fight as hard as possible to get as much revenue (progressively) as possible.
If the words “Satan sandwich” by a blog commentator is harmful to the process, surely phone calls from constituents can make everything work!
Here: http://progma.us/choosegrowth
Real people’s lives:
Mass Budget is good medicine.
Thanks for a great line Charley.
Praise goes to the Equal Justice Coalition (of lawyers who provide a lot of Pro Bono services to the poor the elderly and the disabled as well as rich people). More great lines can be found here. and here is an excellent fact sheet.
-The Equal Justice Coalition (EJC) is a collaboration created by the Massachusetts Bar Association, Boston Bar Association and the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation committed to ensuring that low-income people in Massachusetts have access to the courts when they have a civil (non-criminal) legal problem.
The Coalition includes representatives from bar associations across the Commonwealth, law firms and legal services programs who together work to protect the state appropriation for civil legal aid (budget line item 0321-1600, the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation).
Thanks for the plug, Judy. Anyone who wants to help advocate for funding for legal services can also go to the EJC action alert page to send an email to your state rep urging him or her to co-sponsor Rep. Balser’s budget amendment.
Amendment #536 to H.3400
MLAC (MA Legal Assistance Corporation)
Representatives Balser of Newton, Atkins of Concord, Linsky of Natick, Hogan of Stow, Kaufman of Lexington, Sannicandro of Ashland, Hecht of Watertown, McMurtry of Dedham, Toomey of Cambridge, Gregoire of Marlborough, Keenan of Salem, Chan of Quincy, Kafka of Stoughton, Provost of Somerville, Khan of Newton, Honan of Boston, Kocot of Northampton, Rushing of Boston, Smizik of Brookline, Fernandes of Milford, Dykema of Holliston, Garballey of Arlington, O’Day of West Boylston, Walsh of Framingham, Rogers of Norwood, Turner of Dennis, Walsh of Boston, Gordon of Bedford, Keefe of Worcester, Farley-Bouvier of Pittsfield, Andrews of Orange, Benson of Lunenburg, Calter of Kingston, Malia of Boston, Peisch of Wellesley, Garlick of Needham, Cusack of Braintree, Scibak of South Hadley, Rogers of Cambridge, Decker of Cambridge, Parisella of Beverly, Ehrlich of Marblehead, Walsh of Lynn, Michlewitz of Boston, Schmid of Westport, Sciortino of Medford and Markey of Dartmouth move to amend the bill in section 2, in item 0321-1600, by striking out the figures “$11,000,000” and inserting in place thereof the figures “$15,500,000.”
Pretty good.