Idaho Legal Aid cuts office hours to save money

BOISE – Money woes are forcing a nonprofit legal aid outfit that helps thousands of Idaho’s poorest residents to begin shuttering its offices on selected days.

Idaho Legal Aid Services, which has already cut hours of its staff and 21 attorneys, has a $250,000 hole in its $2.6 million annual budget. Its leaders say employees at nine offices will now take forced days off without pay starting on May 27. If that’s not enough, layoffs could be in the offing, said deputy director James Cook.

Congress in April cut about $15.8 million from the federal agency that provides about 60 percent of Idaho Legal Aid Services’ funding.

And a bill in the 2011 Idaho Legislature that would have shored up its coffers died amid opposition from the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation, which has tangled with Legal Aid Services in the past over labor laws that govern migrant workers.

Cook says the demise of this year’s legislation kept Idaho as the only state that doesn’t provide any funding for legal aid for poor people.

Idaho Legal Aid has seven offices in Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Twin Falls, Boise, Caldwell, Lewiston and Coeur d’Alene, as well as two satellite offices in Nampa and Boise.

It provides direct legal assistance to more than 2,000 people annually, as well as advice over two telephone hot lines – for seniors and domestic-violence victims – to another roughly 2,000 people.