Valley Legal Aid Group at Risk as Congress Deliberates : Law: Critics seek to replace program for the poor with grants to states. Funds may be cut, tactics curbed.

Attorney Neal Dudovitz has lost in court before, but the verdict that Congress may hand down this week will sting more than most, affecting not just one client but his entire practice aiding the San Fernando Valley’s poor.

The Legal Services Corp.--which provides funds to such groups as Dudovitz’s San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services--has been at the center of controversy for much of its 20-year existence. This week, however, it may suffer a fatal blow.

Led by conservative critics of the current system, both the House and Senate are poised to eliminate the Legal Services Corp. and replace it with direct grants--albeit lesser ones--to states.

The legislation would mean far less money for groups like Dudovitz’s and would also drastically alter his workload. As it is now, legal aid attorneys spend the bulk of their time on family law, landlord-tenant disputes and employment matters. Occasionally, they do grapple with constitutional questions and file class-action suits, but those more complex legal actions would be banned under the new regulations.

“I think the existence of meaningful legal services for the poor is at stake,” said Dudovitz, who is director of the group’s 40-member staff serving the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys.

To Dudovitz, the federally funded legal aid program is about people like the bedridden widow who was ripped off by an unscrupulous locksmith. The man conned her into signing over her home and only backed down and returned the property when a legal aid attorney intervened.

San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services--which set up two special offices after the Northridge earthquake to assist victims--serves thousands of poor clients every year on matters ranging from evictions to domestic violence.

It is not the routine cases, however, that have provoked the ire of critics. Instead, they complain that some legal aid attorneys are going far beyond their original mission of providing basic legal aid to the poor.

The critics say they have on occasion represented drug dealers and other criminals, attempted to overturn government statutes and engaged in lobbying--all while being paid with federal funds.

They cite a series of bizarre cases which they say indicate that legal aid is spinning out of control, such as the Miami legal aid lawyer who represented a public-housing tenant fighting eviction after pleading guilty to drug charges. And the Dallas attorney who sought Social Security disability benefits for a convicted burglar who injured his back while breaking into a Porsche dealership. (The judge threw the case out, not buying the attorney’s argument that it was unconstitutional for the Social Security Administration to deny benefits for injuries sustained in the commission of a crime.)

Interest groups have other concerns. Christian organizations complain about the use of taxpayer money to help people with divorces. Agricultural businesses say legal aid attorneys are organizing migrant farm workers into unions and filing frivolous suits.

“Migrant advocacy attorneys have caused untold economic disruption and job loss in agriculture industries,” according to the Farm Business Coalition, which represents California’s fruit growers.

Such talk infuriates Jose Padilla, director of California Rural Legal Assistance, another recipient of federal funds that represents farm workers in a variety of legal matters.

“Abolish CRLA and you throw 20,000 people out of the legal system,” he said. “Migrant farm workers will be free for the picking.”

Padilla cites the case of the Ventura County flower grower convicted of holding dozens of Mexican laborers in grim conditions on his property. Attorneys in Padilla’s Oxnard office exposed the abuse, prompting a $1.5-million award to the workers and the conviction of rancher Edwin M. Ives for corporate racketeering and numerous labor and immigration violations.

“Farm workers living behind barbed-wire fences will continue to live there,” he said. “This law will allow that sort of lawlessness. There will no longer be any kind of enforcement in rural California.”

Legal aid advocates say the handful of off-the-wall cases rounded up by critics do not tell the real story of legal aid, which every day keeps those at the bottom of society from being ripped off by those at the top.

“When you get past all the rhetoric, this is a blow by representatives of the rich and powerful to try to reduce the ability of the poor to exercise their rights,” said Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), a staunch defender of legal aid who fought the new rules during committee meetings last week. “If this is not the death knell for Legal Services, it is a very serious wound.”

Berman won some points during the Judiciary Committee’s consideration of the bill last week, but he was unable to stop it from going to the full House. His amendment added employment cases to the list of those that legal aid attorneys could take on.

Both the House and Senate are expected to consider the overhaul of legal aid this week, setting the stage for a confrontation with the White House, which has strongly opposed the legislation and hinted at a veto.

The proposal would throw out the current system, in which the Legal Services Corp. funds more than 300 designated providers across the country, including 33 in California. Instead, grants would go directly to the states based on the size of the population living below the poverty line.

States would then choose lawyers or law firms, based on bids, to handle legal aid for the poor in certain geographic areas. The contract lawyers would issue monthly bills to the state. Existing legal aid groups could compete for the bids but would receive no special preference.

That system would be in effect as long as the federal funds last.

The House bill proposes reducing legal aid funding from $400 million this year to $278 million next year. By 1999, the budget would fall to $100 million. It is the goal of some lawmakers to end federal support for legal aid after that.

The declining federal support would devastate the San Fernando Valley group, which receives close to $2 million from Washington, roughly two-thirds of its budget. The rest of its money comes from the State Bar Assn. and the city of Los Angeles.

Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale), who supports the overhaul of Legal Services, said private attorneys will need to step in to fill the gap.

“The private bar has been doing a marvelous job in representing poor clients that have problems,” said Moorhead, who years ago coordinated the representation of the poor at the Glendale Bar Assn. “I think, in the long run, the private bar should be handling these cases. I’m not sure government involvement is the right way.”

Moorhead said he might even be willing to pitch in once he retires from Congress and returns to Glendale at the end of 1996.

“Maybe after I’ve retired, I’ll give advice to some of these people myself,” he said. “I believe they have a right to counsel, but I just don’t see the government being the best way to handle it.”

But even with Moorhead’s involvement, representatives of bar associations doubt that their members could ever take on all the cases now handled by legal aid attorneys.

Besides reductions in funding, legal aid attorneys are deeply concerned about future limitations on their work, especially restrictions on class-action lawsuits.

San Fernando Valley Legal Services has used the technique successfully in the past. In the late 1980s, it sued the Los Angeles Police Department for not actively responding to domestic violence cases, prompting a widely applauded reform of LAPD policies.

The group is now suing Los Angeles County trying to prevent it, despite its fiscal crisis, from curtailing health care for existing patients. Legal aid attorneys argue that the county has an obligation to continue treatment for existing patients or assist them in finding other doctors.

“If you hamstring us and not allow us to file class-action suits, you give the poor substandard legal representation,” Dudovitz said. “Where will poor people be able to go in the future to get help?”