State Bar Plans Near-Shutdown Pending Rescue

The State Bar of California, which regulates and disciplines the state’s lawyers, will lay off most of its staff and dismantle the bulk of its operations Friday unless the California Supreme Court intervenes immediately to find the agency a new source of money--a prospect that officials concede is unlikely.

The near-shutdown of the 71-year-old agency was made necessary by Gov. Pete Wilson’s veto last year of a bill to provide continued funds for the bar. Wilson has been unhappy with liberal positions taken by the lawyers group. Since then, the state Legislature has been unable to muster the two-thirds vote needed to pass a bill that would keep the organization intact.

Bar services, including discipline of errant lawyers and the evaluation of judicial nominees, will come to “an almost complete standstill” after Friday unless either the Supreme Court or the Legislature acts to break the stalemate, said Marc Adelman, the president of the bar.

Although the bar has been criticized by many lawyers, the anticipated layoffs may have a significant impact on consumers. The layoff of 435 bar staff members this week would leave the organization with only about 200 employees, a fraction of its normal work force. During the past several months, 100 staff members left voluntarily, 45 were laid off and 80 positions were frozen.

“If an attorney has stolen your money, you can try to get a call in--I don’t know to whom--but we can’t do anything,” said bar investigator Karen Sexton-Smith, who will retain her job in the bar’s Los Angeles office. “Everything is pretty much up in the air.”

Even if the standoff over the organization’s budget is resolved, she added, rebuilding the organization will take time. “This is bad,” she said. “People have gotten to the point that they have found other jobs and are not intending on coming back.”

Adelman said the bar will operate with a skeleton crew, but “somebody will answer the phone.” Among the offices that will be eliminated are communications, which handles inquiries from the media, he said.

Wilson Veto of Funding Bill

Wilson vetoed a bill in October that gave the bar authority to levy the bulk of its annual dues. Without that authority, the bar has only been allowed to charge $77 in dues from each lawyer in the state, compared with $478 annually in the past. The money raised by that $77 levy is nearly exhausted.

As an emergency stopgap, the bar has asked the Supreme Court to set dues for the state’s 130,000 practicing lawyers at an additional $287 for this year, payable within 30 days of a mailed notice. Adelman sent the state high court a 19-page “emergency” request Monday for an interim order implementing the new dues structure.

But action by the court is considered a longshot. Four of the seven justices face a retention election this year, and the bar has been a target for conservatives, some of whom already are firing at the court because of a ruling in an abortion case.

“A longshot may be better than no shot at all,” Adelman said in an interview. “The impasse that has occurred in the Legislature has regrettably forced us to take this action.”

Adelman noted that the bar is a “constitutional agency within the judicial branch” that assists the Supreme Court in regulating the legal profession. “The court has the authority to act immediately,” he said.

But the bar’s chief antagonist angrily disagreed. “This is another attempt by the state bar to perpetuate the stale policies of the past,” said a spokesman for Wilson.

“Today’s action is a slap in the face to the legislative process and raises serious questions on the separation of powers,” spokesman Ron Low said. Wilson does not believe that the state high court has the authority to levy dues, Low added.

Last month, Wilson said he would sign a bar dues bill if the group agreed to allow the governor’s office to appoint its leaders, now elected by the state’s lawyers. Wilson’s proposal is one of several now pending in the Legislature, none of which has been able to muster the votes to move forward.

Adelman called the governor’s plan unacceptable, contending that “there is no place for politics in the administration of justice.”

“If the board of governors are politically appointed, by the governor or others,” Adelman said, “we become an arm of the executive branch.”

Complaints About Bar

Wilson favors a bill that would allow the bar to collect $295 a year in dues. Bar leaders say that will not be enough to pay for an adequate disciplinary system.

In his veto message last year, Wilson complained that a group of bar delegates had endorsed more racial diversity in law schools, a resolution that the governor said was an attempt to circumvent the state ban on affirmative action.

Wilson also objected to other bar delegate positions, including an endorsement of gay marriages, a ban on discrimination against transvestites and transsexuals, and reduced penalties for child molesters.

Wilson’s antipathy for the bar is shared by many lawyers, including liberals. Critics have long accused the organization of wasteful spending on excessive staff, lobbyists, executives and conferences.

The bar has survived previous attempts to shut it down. In 1985, the Legislature refused for several months to let the bar collect dues because it had a poor record in disciplining lawyers.

The bar saved itself that time by revamping its discipline system, a costly reform that led to higher dues and intense grumbling from the state’s lawyers, who must pay the fees to practice law in California.