http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20110425/GPG0101/104250529/Plan-cuts-legal-services-poorWisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's budget plan cuts legal services for poor
Budget would redirect circuit court filing fees
6:39 AM, Apr. 25, 2011
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A program providing civil legal services for the poor receives $4 from each $21.50 fee.
Under Walker's plan, the $21.50 no longer would be parceled out. Instead, it would go into the general fund, and the state Department of Administration would dole out money to CCAP and a variety of different programs.
The amount providing legal assistance to the poor, which is about $2.5 million annually, would be cut entirely under the plan.
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"My real concern is that thousands of men, women and children will not have lawyers to protect them from abusive spouses, unfair denial of public benefits, consumer scams and other civil legal problems," said Leon Lynn, spokesman for Legal Action of Wisconsin, a Milwaukee-based agency that provides legal services to the poor and elderly.
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Re the money being diverted from the usual system to the control of the Department of Administration -- as I posted last night,
the DOA secretary, Mike Huebsch, who was the main author of Walker's budget "repair" or "adjustment" bill that already caused so much trouble, was Wisconsin state chair (co-chair with Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald) of
ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, just last year. The current ALEC state chair, and co-chair of the Wisconsin legislature's Joint Finance Committee, is Robin Vos. The other co-chair of that committee, Alberta Darling, is also an ALEC member.
This is ALEC is action.
And, as
Jim Hightower pointed out in an opinion piece I posted earlier this morning, this is plutocracy. It isn't conservative, and it sure as hell isn't democracy.
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