Marin Foundation Cuts Funds for San Quentin Inmate Services

Trustees of a massive trust that was established to aid the needy residents of wealthy Marin County have sharply cut funds that provide legal services to 3,000 San Quentin prison inmates who have no other representation.

Cuts in the legal service program and three other San Quentin programs were announced as the new Marin Community Foundation, which oversees the $400 million-plus trust bequeathed by Beryl H. Buck, made the first annual gifts since the conclusion of a bitter and draining legal battle for control of the fund.

The projects at San Quentin “became a lower priority compared to the other areas that we needed to fund. . . . We needed to make choices,” said Douglas X. Patino, president of the foundation. The fund had $19 million to give in this round, $10 million a year less than it did before the litigation.

Now ‘in Bad Shape’

“This is the bedrock of our support. Without that stable funding source we are really in bad shape,” said Donald Specter, director of the five-lawyer Prison Law Office, which received $181,000 this year to handle legal problems of the San Quentin inmates. Another $50,000 a year comes from the Legal Services Trust Fund money and about $70,000 yearly comes from fees from its court fights.

The law office, housed in a bungalow next to the prison, hoped for $290,000 in 1990. But Specter learned last Thursday it will receive $90,000 in “phase-out” money from the Marin Community Foundation, enough to last six months.

The office has received $1.8 million in Buck money over the past 10 years.

The Marin Community Foundation also cut smaller grants to an arts project for Death Row inmates, a group that matches inmates with visitors and a center next to the prison where out-of-town visitors can stay while waiting to see inmates.

At more than $400 million, the fund remains one of the nation’s largest community-based foundations. But its trouble began in 1984, when lawyers for the San Francisco Foundation, which ran the trust in its early years, and charities outside Marin sued to break a provision of Buck’s will that limited the largess to Marin County causes.

Money for Other Projects

A 1986 settlement of the suit required that the trust, now administered by the Marin Community Foundation, spend more than $6 million a year on three long-term projects to study aging, drug abuse and education in Marin.

Court costs and lawyers’ fees cut the Buck principal by $12 million. Lower interests rates took another bite out of the fund, Buck spokeswoman Sallyanne Wilson said.

As a result, there was roughly $19 million--the interest on the endowment--to divvy up for next year, down from the $29 million it had before the suit. The Marin Community Foundation earmarked $6.8 million for human needs.

Requests from groups seeking $23 million poured in. In all, 54 groups got funding, and 90 were refused. The groups that won funding will seek to end the “isolation of the frail elderly,” help abused children, and assist AIDS sufferers.

“This (decision to cut the prison projects) is a demonstration of the insular nature of the trustees,” charged Robert Gnaizda, director of Public Advocates Inc., the San Francisco law firm that led the attack on the Marin County-only clause of Buck’s will.

Gnaizda said the prison cuts at a time of growing prison crowding were made because “prisoners have no political power by definition. They cannot vote.”

Patino scoffed at the suggestion that prisoners’ lack of political pull played a part in the decision. “We do not fund--nor would we be the type of organization that would fund--based on political support,” he said. “We fund based on the need.”

Handled Various Cases

The Prison Law Office handles up to 2,000 cases a year, ranging from the child custody problems of individual prisoners to inmate disputes with prison administrators.

It also is involved in class-action suits, including litigation over conditions at San Quentin that forced the state to spend $35 million to renovate the turn-of-the-century prison.