Idaho Legal Aid to seek state support

Idaho Legal Aid Services, Inc. is going to hire a lobbyist in the coming legislative session as it seeks state funding to replace a possible loss of its federal support.

Idaho Legal Aid serves as a nonprofit law firm, providing services to people who cannot afford a lawyer. The nonprofit has seven regional and two satellite offices, three toll-free legal advice lines, and a website with legal forms and educational content.

Its mission is to help Idahoans with legal problems such as escaping domestic violence and sexual assault, protecting abused and neglected children, preserving housing, helping vulnerable seniors and stopping discrimination. It also has an Indian law and migrant farmworker unit.

The Trump administration has proposed ending primary federal support for legal aid programs in its proposed budget for 2018. Idaho is one of very few U.S. states that doesn’t provide state support for these programs. So this coming year, Idaho Legal Aid hopes to talk to state lawmakers about its mission and secure some state funding, said Executive Director Jim Cook.

Cook said Legal Aid benefits society as well as individuals. Most of the nonprofit’s resources are consumed by domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking cases, and 99 percent of the time, Legal Aid is representing women, often with children. Most of the time, these women also work at Idaho businesses.

“We’re doing protection orders, we’re doing divorces, custody cases,” Cook said. “Almost all of our clients are employed, so when they’re getting beaten, or hospitalized, that affects a  number of things through the community. It affects whether they can come to work, and how reliable they are at work, and it affects their kids.”

Idaho Legal Aid has a budget of about $2.8 million and 45 full- and part-time staff, Cook said.

The Trump administration plan “would basically implode the whole civil legal safety net nationwide,” Cook said. “Legal Aid in states that have some state funding are going to be much more likely to survive. My program would probably frankly be eliminated.”