Free legal service on the wane
Budget cut by $50,000, but attorney vows central Illinois poor
will not be left in lurch
Christopher Williams
Friday, August 30, 2002
PEORIA - Prairie State Legal Services Inc. of Peoria managing
attorney Lisa Y. Wilson vows that poor central Illinoisans will
continue to have free lawyers to assist them, despite funding
cuts.
"There has been a decrease in funding to this Prairie State
Legal office by about $50,000," Wilson said Thursday. "That means
that we will lose money to supply one attorney, but we should be
able to continue to manage. It's not having the impact as it is
having in Chicago" and at other agencies statewide.
Wilson's office, at 331 Fulton St., Suite 600, serves poor
residents in the counties of Peoria, Tazewell, Woodford, Marshall
and Stark.
Wilson learned from Eric Kleiman, a spokesman for Legal Services
Corp. - the Washington, D.C.-based agency that distributes federal
money for free legal aid programs in Illinois - that LSC will lose
about $920,000 in congressional funding annually.
Besides Prairie State, LSC also funds the Legal Assistance
Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago, and Alton-based Land of Lincoln
Legal Services.
The cuts will take the biggest bite out of Land of Lincoln, a
network of eight offices and 40 lawyers who help clients in
southern Illinois with problems such as eviction, access to Social
Security and obtaining orders of protection from abusive spouses,
Kleiman said.
The LSC allocates money to states based on the number of poor
counted in the last census. The 2000 census showed Illinois with
about 35,000 fewer people who are eligible for LSC services.
Although the three groups deliver most of the legal aid in
Illinois, dozens of other programs offer similar services, and all
will feel the pain when the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois doles
out grants for 2003.
The fund, created by the Illinois Supreme Court in 1983, gets
interest from escrow accounts and other money lawyers often keep
for their clients and spends it on legal aid. This year, the fund
will likely award just half of the $3.5 million it usually gives
some 34 groups statewide, said Ruth Ann Schmitt, the trust funds
executive director.
The Illinois General Assembly has appropriated about $500,000
annually for legal aid in recent years, an amount Bartylak said has
not been much reduced. Still, of the nation's 10 most populated
states, Illinois ranks last in the amount of money legislators
appropriate for legal aid, LSC President John Erlenborn said
earlier this year.
Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons said all the budget
cuts will not affect poor criminals because the state court
appoints public defenders.
