blogs.wsj.com
Excerpt:
IOLTA funds, combined with state and federal money and private grants, generally pay for things intended to improve access to justice. In South Dakota, for example, the money helps fund programs that provide legal assistance for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and wills for senior citizens. In New York, IOLTA has bolstered efforts to help tenants tackle housing problems, such as landlords who illegally overcharge them.
“We’re all very happy about it,” Kirra Jarratt, executive director of the D.C. Bar Foundation, which funnels IOLTA funds to legal aid providers there, told the Washington Post. “Interest rates have been down and programs have been suffering, so this is huge. It’s so much money, and so much can be done with it to help people.”
Not everyone is delighted. The National Review, for instance, said the settlement will pour “tens of millions of dollars into the coffers of the radical Left’s top rabble-rousers.”
And Investor’s Business Daily ran this editorial describing the IOLTA windfall as a big payoff to “radical Democrat activist groups.” Those include NeighborWorks of America, a nonprofit housing network, and Mutual Housing Association of New York, which IBD said was among a number of groups “operating in the mold of Acorn,” the community organizing group that disbanded in 2010 following a series of undercover videos that showed employees offering advice on how to set up brothels and evade taxes. |
