The Congress should maintain stringent oversight of all of the Corporation's case reporting activities, through budget and oversight hearings, until it is confident that all of the information supplied by Corporation leadership and the Inspector General in future reports and statements is complete, accurate, and reliable.
The Congress should also correct a weak link in the accountability chain. The LSC Act presently requires an annual report to the U.S. President and the U.S. Congress on legal services provided. However, the applicable provision lacks clarity and specificity (Appendix 1). The Act should be amended to require a complete and accurate accounting of all cases remaining open at the end of the year and closed during the year. The annual reporting requirement should also require Corporation leadership to certify that the contents of the report is complete, accurate, and reliable. Such a requirement would make it more likely the President, the Congress, and the general public would get a more accurate view of what the program is accomplishing, in terms of legal services rendered, with the several hundred million dollars invested in the program each year. Without a specific statutory requirement for case information, it is very unlikely the Corporation will produce a timely and accurate report.
The Congress should take a fresh look at the current Corporation organizational structure to determine if any major changes are warranted at this time. It appears the Corporation is unable to perform the basic, and critically important, function of counting cases. It has been refining and upgrading the case reporting system for about 20 years and despite a major system upgrade in 1995, it still cannot get accurate performance data to the President, Congress, and public. If it cannot perform this basic task, then how can these program administrators be trusted to oversee the delivery of quality legal services to the poor? Something is clearly wrong and needs to be fixed. A congressionally mandated study of the LSC organization, by a group of renowned people outside of LSC organizational influences, with a tasking to provide recommendations on organization restructuring to Congress is one plausible way to approach this problem.
The Congress should complete the record by making a judgment on whether
this Inspector General met his statutory responsibility for keeping the
Congress "fully and currently" informed of all "significant problems, abuses,
and deficiencies" as required by the IG Act. There is a preponderance of
evidence suggesting the Inspector General did not fulfill his dual reporting
responsibility to the Congress on this matter. Materially significant information
pertaining to the FY 1999 and FY 2000 Corporation budget requests was in
the possession of the Inspector General and was not provided to Congress.
In semiannual reports to Congress and when questioned about the case reporting
problem by a member of Congress and congressional staff, the Inspector
General proceeded to deny a significant and widespread problem existed
or fully disclose important matters. Afterwards, the Board proceeded to
resolve serious charges against him along with passing a resolution to
increase his salary. Based on this episode, it is reasonable to conclude
that the incumbent Inspector General is not an independent, credible, or
effective watchdog of the Corporation. If the incumbent were, the Congress
would have found out about the case over-counting and reporting problem
in February 1998 and certainly during the summer of 1998. If the Congress
cannot rely on the Corporation Inspector General to alert it about significant
matters effecting the budget and the credibility of the Corporation, one
can reasonably expect that equally important and serious matters may not
be promptly and properly reported in the future as well.
Index of the LSC Case Over-Counting Scandal
Legal Services Accountability Project Page