Foundation prepares to disburse roughly $32 million in legal aid grants in December
The increased dollars will be used to plug funding holes for struggling legal services organizations
The Florida Bar Foundation will distribute roughly $32 million to state organizations providing free civil legal services to those who cannot afford them by December 31, up from $7.7 million last year.
The 34 legal aid groups that received money last year should expect additional Foundation grants this year, but at roughly four times the amount, said Foundation Executive Director Donny MacKenzie.
MacKenzie said the Foundation sent out a survey asking the legal aid services if they “have the capacity to spend that money.”
“We don’t want to waste money,” MacKenzie said. “All of the grantees who responded said yes.”
Donny MacKenzie
The money is intended to be used to pay for the salaries of attorneys who represent low-income clients for free in areas that affect their basic needs: health and shelter, personal safety, security, and stability.
The increased funding seems like a boon to legal aid at first blush, but it isn’t.
For one thing, funding is already low, meeting about just 8% of overall need in both Florida and the nation. For another, needs have been exacerbated for low-income families during the pandemic. Also, other federal funding sources are expected to drop off next year.
Funding from the federal Victims of Crimes Act, which uses largely white-collar crime fines to pay for compensation and assistance to victims, is expected to decrease statewide by $40 million. And annual dollars from the federal Legal Services Corporation may go down, too.
“So, this added money comes at a very fortunate time,” said MacKenzie.
MacKenzie said the Foundation received a letter from one legal aid services group in rural Florida saying the additional money would be used to hire back someone they had to let go, and to restart a pro bono program they had to shut down.
“We’re going to basically get back to where we were,” said MacKenzie. “And that’s always good news.”
The Foundation’s legal aid funds are generated from interest on IOTA accounts. These funds increased more than four times over last year because interest rates have increased along with inflation.
While this money appears unstable, the Florida Supreme Court is trying to bring transparency and stability to the funds. Since 2021, the court has issued two amendments to the rule that governs the funds. The first amendment required the Foundation to spend no more than 15% of the total dollars on administration, and to separate the funds out for easier tracking. A 2023 amendment required lawyers to keep their trusts in higher-yield trust accounts that would bring in more money for legal aid.
The Florida Bankers Association is pushing back on the second amendment, saying that it “goes too far, too fast.” The court on rehearing is taking comments on the matter until November 1, at which time the court could make a final decision on the amendment or allow oral arguments.
The Florida Legislature is one of just three in the country that declines to provide funding for civil legal aid services in its annual budget topping $117 billion this year, according to the 2022 final report by The Florida Bar’s Special Committee on Greater Public Access to Legal Services. The committee recommended to the court in that report that the Legislature start allocating annual money for civil legal aid, in part, because these programs produce $7 in economic impact for every dollar spent.
“Funding is critical to the operations of all the state’s legal aid programs,” states the committee’s report. “The Court, The Florida Bar, The Legislature, and the Executive branch should work collaboratively to secure dependable funding.”
Florida civil legal aid funds are a patchwork of donations from the Foundation, individual fundraising by local legal aid organizations, and federal dollars from the Legal Services Corporation and the Office for Victims of Crime, which disburses the Victims of Crimes Act compensation and assistance allocations.
Both federal programs are struggling to meet the growing need for civil legal assistance.
The Legal Services Corporation’s bipartisan board requested $1.6 billion for 2024, up from the $560 million Congress allocated in 2023.
“Current funding is simply inadequate to come close to meeting the current need,” wrote Legal Services Corporation Communications Manager Kathryn Fanlund by email. “More than 33% of unmet legal needs are directly related to COVID-19.”
But the increased funding ask is unlikely to materialize and may even decrease in 2024. The U.S. House is considering decreasing funding from $560 million to $489 in 2024 and the U.S. Senate is proposing to maintain it at $560 million. If the House proposal is adopted, the Legal Services Corporation estimates that Florida legal aid groups will serve 12,437 fewer people.
Two areas of major concern include housing and domestic violence, Fanlund wrote.
Traditionally, the federal Office for Victims of Crime would step in on domestic violence assistance, but it continues to take in less money every year since white-collar crimes aren’t being prosecuted as frequently. President Biden signed the VOCA Fix to Sustain the Crime Victims Fund Act of 2021, a measure that amended the law to deposit fines from cases that aren’t prosecuted, which should “restore billions” to the fund, according to the National Network to End Domestic Violence.
But that will take time.
Florida is still spending past years’ allocations, according to the state attorney general’s office, which disburses the victims of crime money to local aid groups. So the $40 million statewide cut for 2024-2025 matches the decreased Florida assistance funding from 2020 to 2021: $106.7 million to $66.7 million.
Jim Kowalski
In addition to that impending cut, President and CEO of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid James Kowalski, Jr., said his office already received a 25% reduction in those federal dollars for this year.
When the federal victims of crime funding drops, state family law assistance programs suffer.
Other than that federal money, “which requires applicants to come in through the ‘crime victim’ door, legal aid in Florida provides almost zero general family law assistance — across the state,” Kowalski wrote. “It is the single biggest area of need, and the coverage is almost zero.”
In addition to the $32 million the Foundation will disburse in December, it has already doled out $3.8 million in pro bono support from the $45.5 million it received in 2022-2023 in IOTA collections. The grants are for one year. The Foundation expects to receive a report on last year’s disbursements from the legal aid organizations in the spring of 2024.
As part of the 2022 disbursement, the Foundation gave $61,207 to IDignity, an organization that works to secure I.D. cards for vulnerable individuals in Central Florida.
One woman who benefitted from the grant, Angel, lost her I.D. while having heart surgery almost two years ago, hindering her ability to apply for a job or secure housing.
“I was completely homeless,” Angel says on an IDignity promotional video. “I came to IDignity to get my I.D. and my birth certificate. And I’ve got all my documents that I need. It made me human again.”
