December 2002

The Board's Work

by Mark A. Panitch

Bremerton (Oct. 18-19)

The WSBA Board of Governors conducted a short but intense meeting, dealing with such "lightening rod" topics as methadone treatment for heroin addicts and funding for civil legal services.

The BOG welcomed Fawn R. Sharp, a member as well as counsel to the Quinault Nation, to an at-large seat. Ms. Sharp was elected by the board at the September meeting, to fill the position vacated by Dave Savage, new president-elect. During most of September, Governor Sharp led a group of Quinault members and others in a cross-country run through 13 states to call attention to threats to tribal sovereignty. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear two cases that bear on tribal sovereignty during the current term.

Two separate panels painted an increasingly desperate picture of civil legal services in Washington as lower interest rates cut into IOLTA funds (see p. 54), and a generally weak economy sends state lawmakers to attack the financial underpinnings of legal services. Legal Foundation of Washington (LFW) Director Barbara Clark also reported that on December 9, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear cases from several states — including Washington — challenging their various IOLTA or similar programs.

At the same time, Clark reported that declining interest rates had left a $1.2 million shortfall in IOLTA income compared to last year when the program brought in about $6 million. The Legislature has cut about the same amount specifically from legal services, forcing the program to lay off attorneys and staff, and close offices.

In a written report to WSBA President J. Richard Manning, LFW President Katrin E. Frank stated that the LFW's "basic concern is the delivery to low-income people of effective high-quality legal assistance."

Frank wrote that the LFW Board had decided to de-fund at least 10 programs for 2003 to protect funding for legal services. These include legal-aid programs in Gray's Harbor, Jefferson, Okanogan and Whitman counties, as well as programs at such well-known organizations as the Northwest Women's Law Center and the annual WSBA Access to Justice Conference.

A second panel, including Columbia Legal Services Director Ada Shen-Jaffe and WSBA Director of Legislative Affairs Gail Stone, reviewed recent meetings of the Supreme Court's Task Force on Civil Equal Justice Funding. They reported that legal services would take a $3 million budget "hit" in the coming year, and there would be no additional funding unless there was an additional source of revenue.

The only immediate source of funding would be an increase in the superior court filing fee, the panel members said. Task force members developed the concept of a $90 filing-fee increase at their October 16 meeting. They described the fee increase as a short-term "crisis strategy."

President Manning called for an advisory vote to see whether the BOG would support a filing-fee increase. There was no apparent opposition from either BOG members or liaisons.

Ms. Shen-Jaffe closed the presentation with an uncharacteristically emotional plea for support that clearly emphasized how serious the situation is. She described having to make "impossible" decisions to close equally important offices, and to lay off equally dedicated and able attorneys and staff. The WSBA has supported legal services for 25 years, she said, and now with a real crisis in the offing it is time to increase those efforts.

Governor Ken Davidson, new WSBA treasurer and delegate to the King County Bar Association (KCBA) Drug Task Force, offered the BOG a description of the Kafkaesque process that addicts must go through in order to obtain treatment for their heroin addition.

Governor Davidson described a bureaucratic nightmare in which methadone sites with openings for new clients could not accept people with a need, while many of those same people were shunted to distant sites with no openings, where they were placed on long waiting lists. He questioned whether anyone should be expected to have the stamina to stick with a program that seemed designed to defeat its own purpose.

Governor Davidson urged the BOG to adopt and support a KCBA resolution calling for additional funding and simplification of the methadone-maintenance program. He noted that Washington's Medicaid Program does not cover methadone treatment even though the treatment is inexpensive and provides a high social return.

He pointed out that this new resolution focuses on the methadone program, while supporting the BOG's entire resolution of December 2001, which covered virtually every problem associated with drug and alcohol abuse. There was discussion among members about the need for functional and accessible methadone programs if the new drug courts are to succeed.

The BOG voted to adopt the KCBA position on methadone programs. The BOG resolution specifically referred to "untreated drug addiction" being "many times more costly than the cost of opiate replacement treatment." And the resolution called for "Medicaid funding for [methadone] treatment." (For the text of the resolution, see the WSBA Web site at www.wsba.org/info/bog/.)