Even while many LSC supporters concede that Congress should have been informed about the false figures, Erlenborn does not. He denies any problem, and instead, engages in attacks on NLPC, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.), and other LSC critics.
Erlenborn is a former Republican Congressman (1965-1985) from Illinois who currently serves as LSC Vice-Chairman. Following his appointment to the LSC board by President Bush in 1989, Erlenborn resigned in 1990 under an ethical cloud. This previous ethical problem undoubtedly qualified him for appointment by Bill Clinton to the LSC board in 1993.
At issue was Erlenborn’s LSC board service while working as an attorney in the Washington, DC office of Seyfarth, Shaw, Fairweather and Geraldson. Erlenborn opposed reforms which would have reduced the amount of LSC-initiated harassment lawsuits against farmers. At the time, the law firm had a number of farmer clients under assault by LSC-funded lawyers.
The appearance was that Erlenborn opposed the reforms to keep legal business flowing to himself. In response to the complaints of outraged clients, the law firm sought an independent legal opinion which found that Erlenborn had an ethical conflict.
A sub-plot in the case counting scandal casts additional doubt on Erlenborn’s personal ethics. Before the phony numbers were discovered, Erlenborn was feuding with the LSC Inspector General Edourd Quatreveux. Erlenborn sought Quatreveux’s scalp and even circulated a memo on Capitol Hill claiming Quatrevaux “misused his office for personal purposes.” But when the case inflation scandal broke, Erlenborn suddenly dropped his campaign, withdrew a formal complaint against Quatrevaux, and approved a hefty pay raise for him. Undoubtedly, Erlenborn calculated that it is better for scandal-implicated LSC officials to “hang together” rather than “hang separately.”
Erlenborn is the perfect Clinton appointee for another reason -- he shares with Clinton a contempt for the plain meaning of words in the law when they are politically inconvenient.
Erlenborn serves as Chairman of something called the Erlenborn Commission. This “Commission” was created by the LSC board following NLPC’s successful complaint against Farm Workers Legal Services of North Carolina (FLSNC). This group illegally sent lawyers to Mexico to recruit Mexicans to come to the United States to sue American citizens. FLSNC had to give back the $17,000 cost of the trip and was barred from receiving future federal funds.
The basis for NLPC’s Complaint was the plain language of the law. It allows for LSC-funded representation of aliens only if “the alien is present in the United States...”
The purpose of the “Commission” is to determine what the law means even though it would seem pretty clear by reading it. But Erlenborn and his allies on the LSC board, chagrined at the success of the NLPC complaint, have launched a search for ambiguity. They now claim that the law means that aliens are eligible for representation if the alien was present in the United States in the past.
In his grand jury appearance, Bill Clinton made the now-classic formulation, “It depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.” Now, Erlenborn wants to redefine “is” as “was.”
For the taxpayer, Erlenborn’s charade has been expensive. The “Commission” has held “hearings” in North Carolina and California, producing hundreds of pages of testimony, all dutifully taken down by a Court reporter. Of course, when his “Commission” is in session, Erlenborn gets to collect LSC’s generous per diem.
This is not the first time Erlenborn has sought to undermine the law through obfuscation. In 1997, Erlenborn attempted to defend the practice of some LSC grantees of charging clients for their services, which is flatly illegal under LSC regulations. At an appropriations subcommittee hearing, Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) engaged in a rare attack on a former colleague of the same party, “It’s outrageous that your interpretation would be that minute, considering all the hot water you are in.”
Rogers concluded, “You can’t seem to help yourself. You do not grasp reality.”
EW