Closing the justice gap: providing civil legal assistance to low-income Americans: hearing before the Committee on the Judiciary

Original publisher: Washington : U.S. G.P.O., 2008. LC Number: KF26 .J8 2008p OCLC Number: (OCoLC)304436093 Subject: Legal assistance to the poor -- United States -- Finance. Excerpt: ... 11 risk-based criteria; and also that that approach use information re-sults from oversight and audit activities consistently. Again, this gets back to the issue of coordination and communication within LSC and with the Inspector General's office. And I can represent to you as a member of the ad hoc committee which was formed by the board to address some of these issues - well, to address in par-ticular the issues of communication and coordination that we have made great strides in the past 6 to 7 months in the areas of com-munication and coordination. And the Legal Services Corporation is stronger because of it. The last recommendation to the Corporation from the GAO is that LSC develop and implement procedures to improve the effec-tiveness of the current LSC fiscal compliance reviews by revising its guidelines, and those guidelines have been updated. And if you have questions about specific changes to the guidelines, manage-ment would, I am sure, be more than happy to give you that infor-mation. The last recommendation, which was addressed to the board, was that the board develop and implement policies that delineate orga-nizational roles and responsibilities for grantee oversight and moni-toring, including grantee internal controls and compliance. And that has been done and is continuing to be done. That was accom-plished primarily through the creation of an ad hoc committee on the board, a three-member committee made up of Mr. Garten, Sarah Singleton from New Mexico, and myself. Sarah was the des-ignated liaison to management. The ad hoc committee had several briefings from the OIG and from OPP and OCE. We have had one public meeting. We gave a report to the entire board at our last board meeting in April. In response to that report, the board, the entire board of the Leg...