ustxtxb_obs_1973_03_16_50_00015-00000_000.pdf

,/ N. \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ N. \\ \\\\ \\ \\ // // // // // // / / // / // // \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ For Most of Us, Houston is a Boom Town. Unfortunately, It Isn’t That Way For Everybody. // // // McGEE in ’73 City Council Pos. 2, At Large // // HE CARES! IDA PRESS 901 W 24th St Austin Multi copy service. Call 477-3641 Happiness Is Printing By i ? IFTURA Newspapers Magazines Political Specialists Signs and Placards Bumperstrips Office Supplies 100% Union Shop PRESS Phone 512/442-7836 1714 SOUTH CONGRESS P.O. BOX 3485 AUSTIN, TEXAS r I Call PICK., Enjoy real money-saving I value, and relax at the I 1 1 1 Before You Pack FOR SAN ANTONIO INALB E ILT 1 C Ky MOTEL particularly the administration’s plans for legal services programs. Legal services, if they survive at all, will be cribb’d, cabined and confined to what a former honcho in Young Americans for Freedom thinks is proper. Howard Phillips, Nixon’s new head of O.E.O., who used to be a YAF organizer, thinks the whole idea of treating the poor as a class is a “Marxist notion.” THE ADMINISTRATION has been building up to its attack on the legal services programs, which carry more credibility with the public than most O.E.O. efforts, since at least the middle of last year. Spiro Agnew was unleashed, again, and a non-lawyer named Marshall Boarman has written a position paper for Phillips on the legal service programs. Boarman’s paper argues that the law that set up the programs never intended to sanction law reform activities by the programs. He argues that it is impermissible and possibly unconstitutional for the federal government to fund a program that gives one segment of society the poor both litigational and legislative assistance denied to other segments. Boarman also argues that law reform seeks to redistribute the economic wealth of the society and to increase the bargaining power of the poor. According to Boarman, the only legitimate activity of legal service lawyers is to assert the currently recognized rights of the poor not to seek to change those rights or enhance the status of the poor in the society. The problem is that the kinds of activities of which Boarman disapproves are open to clients with private lawyers. If the poor are to have equal justice, the range of legal services available to them should not be curtailed simply because of the source of the funding that pays their lawyers. Private attorneys represent their clients through class-action suits, before administrative rule-making boards and before legislatures all the time. One has only to look at the roster of the hundreds of lobbyists registered with this session of the Texas Legislature to see how many private interests hire lawyers to help in drafting and revising legislation. What Boarman makes sound like special treatment for the poor actually only gives them parity \(or would if the legal services programs were funded and functioned as their own lawyers. To restrict the options of legal service lawyers will be to insure continued inequitable legal treatment for their clients the poor. One newly-appointed honcho of the program in Washington, a former professor at Catholic Law School, even wants legal service lawyers to stop representing their clients in divorce actions on the grounds that divorce undermines the role of the family. At present, the administration has set all legal service programs on a six-month funding limit and many of them are funded only for 30 days. Obviously, the programs cannot hire, plan for the future or even carry on present litigation, much less take on new cases, with funding assured only for a few months. The directors and staffs spend more and more of their time trying to justify their existence, which becomes more difficult every month as there is less and less litigation to record. According to Ted Tetzeleff, the director of the program who was fired last month, support a bill creating an independent corporation to run the legal service programs are prohibited from onand complete ban on criminal representation including the information and indictment prohibited. Legal Services attorneys are trying to save the program through a group called Action for Legal Rights. The group has hired Nick Klores, a lawyer, to work for them in Washington. At this point, no one is terribly optimistic about the outcome. M.I. OEO programs, and particularly the community action program were designed to .. . give the poor some stake in their own destiny, and in the society, and to enlarge significantly their ability to help themselves. And that, despite [OEO Acting Director Howard] Phillips’ assertion that the programs have promoted the welfare ethic, is just what OED’s own evaluation says they were beginning to do well. Anyone who has the slightest familiarity with the program knows that one of its major benefits has been what it has done for people. It has uncovered from the ranks of the poor themselves several new lawyers of leadership in communities around the country. It has given people the opportunity to develop skills that help them participate in the management of their own communities and of their own lives. It has given thousands a new sense of their own dignity and worth and some stake in the society. There clearly have been excesses, mistakes and false starts. But the gains in terms of human growth and the institutional achievements documentd in the OEO study destroy both the factual and the philosophical underpinnings of Mr. Phillips’ arguments. In his cheerfully assumed task, he will be dismantling a powerful vehicle for human hope. Washington Post editorial I. have no quarrel with the use of funds by cities to lower taxes, improve police services and build parking garages, but I don’t think we should kid ourselves about what is happening. Revenue sharing, like so much else in President Nixon’s program, is a good way to help those who are already not so badly off. It is no way to help the poor. If the idea is to help those most in need, then the federal government will have to earmark funds in a very special way. Joseph Kraft, Publishers-Hall Syndicate. March 16, 1973 15 96 N.E. Loop Expressway I Adjacent to San Antonio International Airport 1 I % Me NW 11111 IM MB MO Color TV in every room Restaurant & Lounge Heated Pool Family Plan Free Parking ALL AT MODERATE RATES RESERVATIONS: CALL TOLL FREE American Express Space Bank 800 AE 8-5000 Wm 111