Roberta Stick, Esq.
Executive Director
Legal Services of Southeast Nebraska
Terminal Building, Suite 825
941 O Street
Lincoln, Nebraska 68508

Re: 1998 Nebraska State Planning Report

Dear Roberta:

Thank you for the timely submission of the 1998 Nebraska State Plan Report developed in response to LSC Program Letters 98-1 and 98-6. The staff of the Legal Services Corporation Office of Program Operations has thoroughly reviewed and discussed your plan in substantial detail. We have concluded that it does not demonstrate significant progress toward an integrated and comprehensive delivery system for Nebraska. We further conclude that the current configuration of service areas within the state is a serious impediment to achieving such a delivery system.

As Nebraska's legal services community knows, the Corporation has been concerned for some time about the absence of strong working relationships among the three LSC recipients and the resultant inability to maximize their collective resources for the benefit of clients. We have indicated on several occasions our concern over the lack of effective statewide planning and the almost total lack of implementation of Nebraska's 1995 State Plan. Early in the 1998 planning process, LSC staff spoke to project directors, board chairs, the state bar leadership and other stakeholders about our concerns regarding the programs' need to establish an integrated delivery system which provides effective and economical services to clients throughout the state. The 1998 state planning report does not sufficiently address these concerns. Consequently, the Legal Services Corporation intends to award one-year grants to all Nebraska recipients for FY 1999. For the year 2000, we will combine the present three basic field service areas and compete them as one statewide service area. We believe this action will lead to the development of a stronger delivery system that is better able to deliver effective and efficient service to clients in all parts of your state.

In order to provide accurate feedback to your state's planning group of the deficiencies we believe exist in your plan, we provide the following comments:

The goals, purposes, values and norms that underlie and support the Nebraska plan are not stated and they can not be inferred from the contents of the plan. In a viable and defensible planning process, articulation of a common set of values and principles is key to ensuring consistency of vision and purpose. Unless the planners themselves are clear as to their overarching goals, a planning process is simply an exercise on paper.

As you and other experienced legal services directors know, legal services programs do not operate in a vacuum. The efforts and activities of a state's legal services providers must be coordinated with each other, with other providers of services to low-income persons and with funders to ensure that: (a) no group or subgroup of low-income clients is excluded from securing and enforcing its rights within the civil equal justice delivery system; and (b) that all low income persons within the state are able to enjoy meaningful and appropriate access to the civil justice system. The Nebraska plan provides for very little coordination among and between the LSC-funded programs and/or any other key stakeholders such as the private bar, funders, other service providers, and clients. Throughout the report, the emphasis appears to be on what the individual programs do currently and what they, independently and individually, will do in the future. The most notable omission was any discussion of coordination of legal work among the three programs.

In order to engage in effective planning, all legal services providers within a state must be willing to look beyond single issues or a single program to examine the big picture in terms of client needs and organizational capacities in order to develop the best possible methods and mechanisms to address the present and future needs of clients within the state. This plan does not give the reader any concrete information as to what the three LSC-funded legal services providers believe to be the major issues confronting clients and the client communities served by the three programs, how the programs can work collaboratively to respond to these issues, and what the legal services programs within Nebraska envision for their collective future and for the future of the Nebraska delivery system. For example, on page 2 of the plan, the three legal services providers eloquently describe the client communities served in Nebraska: Athe black mother working in a minimum wage job and living in North Omaha, the Native American residing on the Winnebago reservation, the farmer eking out a marginal existence on less than fertile farmland in the southeast, the Hispanic worker in any one of the burgeoning meat-packing plants in northeastern or central Nebraska, the Vietnamese refugee who has been resettled in Lincoln, the migrant farmers working in the sugar beet fields of western Nebraska, and the elderly retiree residing throughout southeastern and north central Nebraska in counties that are graying." Unfortunately, the plan never again references these client groups. The reader has no idea as to how the programs propose to work collaboratively such that these differing client communities will be able to enjoy meaningful, appropriate and equal access to the Nebraska civil justice system.

The plan is disappointing in its failure to take more concrete steps towards examining a statewide advice and intake system even after the providers themselves appear to recognize that statewide intake would be beneficial for the state's clients. (Report, p. 11). In contrast, the 1999 grant proposal narratives submitted by each of the three programs seemed to indicate that there would be a serious effort to examine such a system. The proposal narratives indicated that a knowledgeable consultant would be engaged to assist the programs in developing statewide intake. However, the state planning report appears to show some "backing off" in terms of the three programs' earlier commitment to pursue a professional and independent analysis of the pros and cons of creating a centralized statewide intake system.

The plan also demonstrates little progress in the area of technological improvements; and, indeed this section of the report appears to be a "plan for planning." While the report is replete with goals, the only major step towards the realization of the goals is a plan to identify technology persons in the three programs who will meet to discuss the issues.

The plan appears to take an insular view with regard to involvement of the private bar in services to low-income clients. In 1996, the three programs ceased their subgrants to the Nebraska State Bar Association for pro bono recruitment and referral. Although the plan states that the programs "are willing to reevaluate the current situation," we found it significant that when the Nebraska legal services programs were not under pressure from LSC to integrate and coordinate services, the programs chose to eliminate one of the few instances in which they did in fact work on a coordinated basis to fund a legal services delivery approach with statewide application. Moreover, the planning report which states that the participants will "determine the feasibility and cost efficiency of hiring a single PAI Coordinator" is silent in terms of how the determination of feasibility and cost efficiency will be made (and by whom) and if the PAI Coordinator will be housed with the bar's existing VLP program as opposed to one of the program offices.

Similarly, we find it significant that in 1995 the three Nebraska legal services programs chose not to contribute dollars to preserve state support in the face of the 1995 federal budget cuts and elimination of LSC funding for state support. This decision has resulted in a serious erosion in the state's ability to coordinate important work on behalf of clients. Again, it appears that when the Nebraska legal services programs were not under pressure to integrate and coordinate services, the programs retreated inward, electing to eliminate one of the rare examples of statewide coordination of services. We also note that the plan itself indicates that representatives from the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest (the non-LSC funded organization that has tried to perform some tasks related to state support) were not invited to participate in the development of the state plan until August 1998 (Report, p. 9) even though the plan itself presents the Appleseed Center as an important and strategic component of the state's efforts to create an integrated and coordinated delivery system.

Much of the language contained in the plan is soft and no real systemic change is proposed or guaranteed. For example, the plan repeatedly uses such phrases in relationship to its goals as "the need to evaluate the feasibility/efficiency/benefits" of projected changes and the parties agreement to "gather information." Many goals are not measurable and many do not identify who in the state will be responsible for ensuring that the goals are addressed and met.

Finally, the plan provides neither an objective review nor an analysis of the current configuration nor discussion of its strengths and weaknesses, nor rationale for its continuation. Indeed, the plan states that "At the present time we can not say with certainty whether or not the (report's) recommendations can be implemented through existing organizational structures or whether reconfiguration of service areas is necessary to accomplish the state plan's goals."

Based upon the failure of the Nebraska legal services programs to implement prior plans and the weaknesses of the current planning effort, the Corporation believes that reconfiguration is necessary to create a delivery system that is responsive to the most compelling needs of eligible clients, ensures the highest and most strategic use of all available resources, and maximizes the opportunity for clients throughout the state to receive timely, effective and appropriate services. (Program Letter 98-6)

The Corporation understands that its decision to combine service areas for the year 2000 presents challenges to program staff and leadership. We sincerely hope that in the coming months the three LSC-funded legal services programs, their Boards, and their staff will work with other funders and stakeholders to ensure continuity of client services in 1999 as programs work to develop a statewide legal services delivery system for 2000. Please feel free to call me at 202-336-8876 if you have any questions.