Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. form letter to constituent, 2000

FIELD(letterdate) FIELD(nameline) FIELD(title) FIELD(organization 1 ) FIELD(organization2) FIELD(addressl) FIELD(address2) FIELD(address3) FIELD(address4) IFNOTBLANK(city)FIELD(city), FIELD(state) FIELD(zip9)ENDIF Dear FIELD(salutation2b): Thank you for contacting me regarding funding for the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). I appreciate knowing your views on this issue. The LSC was established in the Nixon-era to handle routine legal problems of the poor. Over time, however, the agency morphed into a taxpayer funded organization focused on political causes and class action lawsuits rather than helping poor Americans solve their legal problems. Accordingly, in 1996, Congress reduced LSCs budget by 25% and limited its activities. In October 1998, 1 supported an amendment to raise LSC’s appropriation by $17 million for fiscal year 1999 largely because I was satisfied the LSC complied with the activities guidelines put in place by the 104th Congress, as confirmed by audits conducted by Independent Public Accountants (IP As). At that time, however, I made it clear that my decisions on LSC’s funding would depend to a large extent on whether these positive reforms continued. Subsequently, Congress learned that as early as July 1998, the agency’s Inspector General (IG) informed LSC’s president that case statistics at several offices were seriously flawed. The LSC’s leadership, however, did not report these performance problems to Congress for another five months, until March 1999. In other words, LSC conveniently failed to bring the IG’s findings to the attention of Congress before the $17 million increase was decided. As the evidence of serious problems with the LSC’s case-reporting statistics and performance numbers emerged, many members of Congress became concerned that the LSC intentionally misled Congress in order to increase its funding level. Accordingly, five House Members requested GAO to audit additional LSC grantee offices to assess the reporting error problem before approving the LSC’s fiscal year 2000 appropriation.