Dear Colleagues – I am looking forward to our (belated!) 2016 All Staff meeting next week. We will have the opportunity to recognize and celebrate some of our colleagues as we gather from all corners of the state to reconnect and reenergize. We will also get to meet and welcome the many new colleagues who have joined the NJP family over the past year, including Dave LaSarte-Meeks on his first day on the job as Senior Attorney for the Native American Unit.
This All Staff meeting provides us with a valuable opportunity to reflect on the essence of our mission and our collective passion for justice, as we come together to build on our accomplishments of the past few years. We look forward to all of your energy and insight to help focus and guide our efforts as we take on the task of developing NJP’s next five-year strategic plan in the months leading up to our fall meeting.
I want to extend a special thank you to Bryan Baker (Director of Development) for overseeing the publication of NJP’s 2016 Annual Report, released this week. For the first time ever, no stock photographs were used and the elegant, clean layout reflects Bryan’s vision and hours of work with clients and staff to produce our best annual report to date.
Funding Updates: On the federal front, the expiring (April 28th) Continuing Resolution has been extended for a week to allow for a possible compromise on Affordable Care and avoid a government shutdown. The Trump Administration has also backed off on demands that Congress provide funding for the border wall, easing some of the pressure on pressure on across the board funding reductions for the remainder of the year.
In Olympia, the legislative session ended without a budget, and the Legislature has been called back into session by the Governor. No formal action on a biennial budget is expected until after the June revenue forecast. As I reported at the end of March, the House budget proposes a substantial increase in civil legal aid funding to address the justice gap, and also funds most of NJP’s maintenance needs. OCLA and the Equal Justice Coalition are working with a bipartisan effort to move the Senate’s proposed (flat) funding to the House level.
Milestone Anniversaries: Please join me in congratulating and thanking Josefina Cerrillo-Ramirez (Bellingham) on her 10-year anniversary with NJP on April 5th, and also Amy Vigorita (CLEAR) on her 5-year anniversary on April 23rd. Josefina has recently brought her great skills and dedication as a field staff attorney, after many years of excellent work assisting clients on CLEAR and CLEAR-DV. Josefina has also demonstrated great statewide leadership on several fronts, especially as an active member and co-chair of the ATJ Board’s Justice Without Barriers committee. Amy too has proven herself a highly effective CLEAR advocate in getting results for clients and working with field offices. She is also active in volunteering in efforts to support and enhance the work of CLEAR advocates. Amy has also been especially helpful working with monolingual Spanish speakers and her calm demeanor is especially helpful to callers with disabilities. Thank you both for your dedication and commitment to our client communities!
Advocacy Highlights: Congratulations to Karla Camac Carlisle (Pasco) for her creative advocacy in a recent case against Benton County. As a result of her work to curtail imprisonment for failure to pay Legal Financial Obligations, Karla represented a former client who had been picked up because of a warrant out of Oregon and inexplicably detained at the Benton County jail for over a month before being transferred to Oregon. Upon arriving in Oregon she was immediately released. Karla challenged the County’s actions arguing that the month-long detention amounted to unlawful imprisonment in retaliation for the client’s role as a lead plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit against Benton County. The County quickly capitulated and agreed to pay the client $18,000.
Also, the Foreclosure Unit’s Chelsea Hicks recently recovered $60,000 for a couple with four children who believed they had entered into a real estate contract to purchase a home in South King County – until they were served with a 20-day notice to vacate after making payments for 10 years. It turns out the “seller” was a known scammer who had instead used an “option” contract requiring the family to pay the contract in full within a fixed number of years. The seller repeatedly assured the family it was a normal contract for purchase (which is why he refused to make any repairs). Chelsea filed suit and, after the seller lost a summary judgment motion, he made a satisfactory settlement offer, making our clients extremely happy. Chelsea is working with Department of Licensing on investigating the seller.
Todd Carlisle (Tacoma) and Elizabeth Flavin (Seattle-Kent) recently represented a homeless client with seven children who had been issued a section 8 voucher by the Tacoma Housing Authority, but was being denied housing because of two nonpayment of rent evictions. Both evictions occurred after the client’s husband (who was then the sole employed adult in the household) abandoned the family. Todd and Elizabeth obtained orders for limited dissemination in Pierce and King County to prevent tenant screening services from reporting either of the evictions to potential landlords, clearing the way for the family to access affordable housing with their voucher.
Tacoma’s Health and Welfare team continue their successful efforts to ensure clients with physical and cognitive disabilities are able to use public, door-to-door ADA paratransit services to access social services and supported employment for persons with developmental disabilities, and transportation to employment. Todd, Brendan Haigh and Sherrie Saunders have reversed several recent decisions by Pierce Transit rejecting requests by individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities, and a woman with cerebral palsy.
CLEAR’s Patricia Proebsting successfully intervened with a collection agency on behalf of a struggling father of five. Our client has continued to work despite an on-the-job injury to meet his family’s monthly expenses. The collection agency had secured a judgement for an old dental bill – one of many medical bills that piled up due to family illnesses and a child’s death. Pat wrote a letter to the plaintiff collection agency setting out the client’s circumstances and requesting that the client be allowed to make monthly payments. The collection agency agreed to accept payments and dropped all its litigation costs. The client was able to pay the debt in full earlier than expected and the collection agency acknowledged in writing that the debt was satisfied.
Steve Robins (Sr. Attorney Port Angeles) successfully represented a single mother and her 7-year old daughter in a lawsuit brought by the Housing Authority. The client had survived an aggressive type of leukemia with experimental treatments, treatments which had serious side effects (memory loss and confusion). She repeatedly fell behind in her rent. Steve represented the client at trial and after a tough drawn out fight won a dismissal of the eviction. The court also denied the Housing Authority’s request for more than $2,000 in attorney’s fees. However, a credit agency listed both attorney fees ($2,200) and several thousand dollars in rent amounts that were not owed, as a judgment against her. NJP then forced the credit agency to remove the bogus claims, removing a bar to the client moving to other assisted housing in the future.
Lindsey Paxton (IRLAP-Wenatchee) recently finalized a divorce in which she also secured Special Immigrant Juvenile Status predicate findings for the client’s daughter, a teenager who had fled gang violence in El Salvador and arrived at the U.S. border as an unaccompanied minor. Previously, the client had left her daughter and fled to the U.S. when first her husband and then she was threatened by drug gangs. Once in the U.S., the client and her husband had another child and when she tried to leave the husband because of growing domestic violence, he retaliated by taking their young child back to El Salvador, leaving him with extended family. He was also physically abusive to their daughter. Lindsey helped the client file for divorce, and obtained the SIJS findings for her daughter who had been paroled into the U.S. to her mother’s care. At the hearing, the Commissioner stated that he hoped that by finalizing the divorce and helping her daughter through the SIJS predicate order, the life of the client and her daughter would be easier from here on.
Ashley Beeman (Seattle D.V. Project Legal Assistant) did an outstanding job providing extensive support to an unrepresented litigant in the midst of divorce and custody trial. Ashley was instrumental in preparing trial notebooks, including extensive client exhibits, a lengthy client’s financial declaration and related documentation. The client successfully represented herself and the judge signed all of the proposed orders exactly as drafted by Lindsey Goheen, including a long-term restraining order for the client. The client reported that the judge and the bailiff both complimented her on the notebooks as being extremely thorough and well-organized.
Staff Acknowledgments: Congratulations to Leslie Savina, Jackie High-Edward, Jennifer Ammons, Mark Ferraz, Karla Camac Carlisle, and Mary Welch, who have been selected by the Access to Justice Board to receive the Access to Justice Advocacy Award at the upcoming ATJ Conference in Yakima. This outstanding statewide NJP team has worked to systemically advance and secure safety protections for domestic violence victims and their families through a highly coordinated appeals strategy, to ensure Washington court extend the full, intended, protections of Domestic Violence Protection Act. Their critically important successes are detailed in our post: Protections Greatly Strengthened for Washington Families! Please join me in congratulating our excellent statewide advocacy team!
Please also join me in congratulating Elisabeth Tutsch (Yakima Senior Attorney) who has been named Family Court Commissioner, bringing to an end her 13-year tenure with NJP in early May 2017. Despite the happy event, she has shared how difficult the decision was because she loves being an NJP advocate. “I’m so honored to do the work we do, and I say with pride when people ask me what is NJP, that we combat injustice in all its forms.”
Benjamin Beach is the Publications Clerk with the Seattle Front Desk team. He is also enrolled in the University of Washington’s Masters in Social Work program and was approved to complete his required practicum at NJP’s King County office. This has allowed him to work side-by-side with King County advocates to assist NJP clients whose immediate problems do not lend themselves to a legal remedy, or who could benefit from social work services. (Ben has also founded a student organization: Poverty Law and Social Services). Recently Ben assisted a couple with 5 children whose problems could not be addressed through legal channels. When they contacted NJP for help in recovering improperly held funds, they were homeless, living in their mini-van, the children were seriously ill, and they had been unable to locate a shelter or other emergency housing that would take them in. Ben quickly ensured the kids got emergency medical care and connected the family with Kids Plus, which immediately arranged motel vouchers, then arranged for transitional housing and soon after was able to offer the family 4-bedroom apartment for up to 2 years, as well as a variety of services to ease the family’s situation.
Congratulations also to Amber Greaves who was selected for the King County Public Benefits positon after several years on CLEAR. Also, congratulations to Marjie High who was selected for the King County, CCYJ Family Advocacy Center position, and Jefferson Coulter, who will be stepping down as Pasco Senior Attorney after his selection for the Spokane staff attorney position.
I am very pleased to welcome Carrie Graf who accepted a VOCA positon in our Olympia office earlier this month after finishing a stint at the Legislature; Ana Vazquez, joining the Screener Unit, with excellent experience in telephone customer service and adds depth to our bilingual capacity. Lastly, this month Mia Palmer joined the NTAP project as part- time Content Editor.
Lastly, our best wishes to our colleague Debbie Williams (L.A.-KC) who recently relocated.
César