I’m only 12 or so days late on this, but on July 28 in The Washington Times, Amanda Carpenter wrote an article detailing how the Legal Services Corp. (LSC) has been throwing away taxpayer money on things like alcohol, casino rooms, and a decorative stone wall. Bizarrely, the LSC is not a one-stop party depot, as these expenses suggest. It is a taxpayer-funded non-profit intended to subsidize legal services for those who are too poor to afford representation in cases like home eviction.
That the LSC is supposed to be helping the poor makes this waste a little harder to swallow. For instance, the organization booked 136 hotel rooms at an Indian casino but never used a single one of them. Some employees of the LSC engage in a practice known as “double dipping,” which means they take a salary from LSC headquarters and associated programs, effectively doubling their pay. The LSC did not follow contracting procedures in 37 out of 38 cases investigated by the government, awarding contracts without any of the required competition.
It’s not as if this organization isn’t on Congress’s radar, either. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has asked his colleagues to stop funding the LSC until it fixes its problems. However, the Obama administration wants to fund the LSC with $45 million to keep pace with the decline in the housing situation of many citizens.
The President’s request makes sense, but Grassley has the better point given the history of the LSC. The LSC assured Congress two years ago that it was not spending any money on alcohol. Yet it was later found that it held two congressional receptions worth a total $8,000. All the food, alcohol, photography, and awards were paid for with federal credit cards.
Read Carpenter’s article for more on the wasteful spending aspect and also the employees who are putting themselves at risk to expose what’s going on.
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August 11th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Shame on the LSC.
President Obama has certainly endorsed boozing it up with his Beer Summits and White House Coktails parties.
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