New York Law Journal
Tuesday, April 9, 2002
City Council Budget Targets Legal Work
By Daniel Wise
The New York City Council yesterday offered a radically
different set of priorities for the handling of the city's legal
work in its response to Mayor Bloomberg's plan to close a projected
$4.8 billion budget deficit.
The City Council plan would increase by nearly 50 percent - to
$80.4 million - the amount of funding Mayor Bloomberg proposed for
the Legal Aid Society by sharply curtailing compensation for
court-appointed lawyers under the 18-B program.
The City Council plan would also reduce to 2 percent the
Bloomberg plan's 7 percent cut for District Attorney's Offices
citywide.
The City Council's proposal for the 650-lawyer Corporation
Counsel's Office would slash its budget by 10 percent - or $10.2
million - to $92 million. In contrast, Mayor Bloomberg's budget
plan called for a modest 3.8 percent in the Corporation Counsel's
budget, leaving the office relatively untouched in comparison to
most other mayoral agencies.
Council aides said yesterday that they did not have a head count
for the cuts at the Law Department, but that the City Council plan
is tilted towards the elimination of legal positions, which at 10
percent would require the layoff of more than 65 lawyers.
At the same time, the City Council plan envisages dramatic cuts
in the legal departments of many city agencies with a view to
transferring the work to the Law Department. The plan also calls
for the elimination of the Mayor's Office of Contracts, which would
save $1.8 million, and the transfer of the legal work done by that
agency to the Corporation Counsel's Office.
Council aides did not have a total for the savings that would be
realized in city agency legal departments through its plan. But,
they said, the proposal would save $10 million by eliminating more
than 300 lawyers at the Administration for Children's Services,
many of whom prosecute neglect and abuse cases in Family Court.
Jack Deacy, a spokesman for Administration for Children's
Services, was unavailable for comment.
Council aides also identified steep cuts in the legal
departments of other agencies: all 40 lawyers at the Department of
Correction for a savings of $2 million; 21 of 28 lawyers at the
Department of Sanitation, saving $945,000; and seven of 10 lawyers
at the Department of Buildings, $451,000 in savings.
Asked how the Corporation Counsel's Office could take on the
expanded work while its own legal staff was being cut, Thomas L.
McMahon, the general counsel of the City Council, said that in view
of the city's "terribly difficult fiscal circumstances," the City
Council plan provides a better way of "managing the city's work
force given the resources we have."
Kate Ahlers, a spokeswoman for Corporation Counsel's Office,
said that her office had not yet received the City Council's plan
and could not comment.
The administrative savings proposed by the City Council through
the elimination of the Office of Contracts and many agency legal
positions were part of $559 million the Council proposed to save
through "consolidation and efficiency" in management.
In total, the City Council proposed realizing $1.65 billion
through savings and increased fees, including restoration of the
commuter tax, to fund its own initiatives and offset some of the
cuts proposed by Mayor Bloomberg in his preliminary budget on Feb.
13.
Legal Aid Would Gain
One of the most dramatic changes in priorities proposed by the
City Council would shift $25.6 million from funding for
court-appointed lawyers to the Legal Aid Society. In a document
released yesterday to justify its reordered priorities, the Council
contended that Legal Aid can achieve greater economies of scale
than lawyers appointed pursuant to Article 18-B of the County Law.
The Council document also noted that "inexplicably" 18-B lawyers
are handling 50 percent of the indigent criminal cases in New York
City, even though their mandate is to handle only multi-defendant
cases where the Legal Aid Society had a conflict.
In past years, the City Council had consistently added $5.6
million to the $54.7 million proposed for the Legal Aid Society by
former Mayor Giuliani, bringing the total to just a shade over $60
million. But this year for the first time, the Council is proposing
shifting more than $20 million in funds earmarked by the Mayor for
18-B lawyers to the Legal Aid Society, which would increase its
total funding to $80.4 million. That would reflect a jump in its
current finding of about one-third.
Meantime, the City Council proposed slashing the Mayor's
allocation of $62.8 million for 18-B lawyers by 66 percent, to
$21.4 million.
Will Consider Proposal
City Criminal Justice Coordinator John Feinblatt expressed a
willingness to look at the Council's proposal. "In tough economic
times," he said, "we are willing to look at any proposal to
reallocate scarce resources."
The Council would restore - and slightly increase - funding for
two agencies that handle legal work for indigent criminal
defendants that Mayor Bloomberg proposed to eliminate in his
preliminary budget. The Council would allocate $4 million to
Neighborhood Legal Services, which is based in Harlem, and $1.8
million to the Office of the Appellate Defender, which handles
appeals for indigent criminal defendants in the First
Department.
The Council proposal would tamp down the 7 percent cut that
Mayor Bloomberg proposed for the city's five district attorneys to
2 percent. The Mayor had estimated that a cut of 7 percent would
reduce city spending for its district attorneys from $231 million
to $215 million, for a savings of $16 million.
The Council's documents did not itemize the savings projected at
the 2 percent level, but using the Mayor's figures, a 2 percent cut
would result in budget for prosecutors of $226.4 million and a
savings of $4.6 million.
The Council budget would also restore $7.4 million in city
funding for civil legal services work done by the Legal Aid Society
and Legal Services for New York City, which the Mayor had proposed
cutting.
