April 22

April 22, 2005

Senator Byron Dorgan

322 Hart Senate Office Building

Washington, DC 20510-3403

RE: Denver Office of U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

Dear Senator Dorgan:

We are writing to ask your assistance in avoiding the closure of the Rocky Mountain Region Office (Denver) of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

The Rocky Mountain Regional Office serves seven states, including North Dakota. Because of budgetary constraints within the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the Director has decided to close two regional offices, the other in Kansas City, which serves another nine states.

It is our understanding that if the Denver office closes, responsibility for the services it provides will be transferred to the Los Angeles office, which currently serves nine western states. It is clear that if this happens, the services available to citizens of North Dakota will severely decline. To add North Dakota and six other states to an office which already serves Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, and Washington will be to deprive the residents of North Dakota any semblance of assistance in addressing civil rights issues in North Dakota. The Rocky Mountain Regional Office currently serves as a resource and clearinghouse for complaints, and advises hundreds of people every year who believe that they have been the victims of discrimination. These services will continue to be needed in the future, and the Los Angeles office will be critically overburdened to provide them to the residents of North Dakota, as well as the other 15 states in the Los Angeles service area.

The Denver office also provides staff support to the Advisory Committees of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in seven states, including the North Dakota Advisory Committee, made up of volunteers from North Dakota to provide information to the Commission on civil rights issues in North Dakota. This Advisory Committee is responsible for the issuance of two seminal reports on civil rights issues in North Dakota, one on civil rights enforcement and one on special education. The report on civil rights enforcement, issued in 1999, has been the guiding document for the work of the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition, including the work we have done on the creation of three local human relations commissions (in Fargo, Bismarck and Dickinson), and on the creation of the Division of Human Rights in the North Dakota Department of Labor, including the ability of the Division to investigate and enforce all violations of the North Dakota Human Rights Act, as established in the 2001 North Dakota legislative session. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will continue to need the information on the status of civil rights supplied by the North Dakota Advisory Committee, as well as the committees of the other states in this region, and to remove the staff support for those Advisory Committees will deny the Commission that information.

The Denver staff have also conducted community forums and provided training, education and technical assistance to many communities and elected officials in the region. The staff were of critical assistance in the formation of the first local human relations commission in North Dakota, in Fargo in 2000. This training, education and technical assistance will continue to be needed in North Dakota, and will not be realistically available from overburdened staff in Los Angeles.

We believe that other options for cost-cutting within the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights have not been sufficiently explored. It is out understanding that the staff of the Denver office have proposed $50,000 in cost-cutting measures. This could assist in avoiding the closure of this office. We ask that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights choose other measures to address the long-standing financial deficit within the Commission, rather than closing the Rocky Mountain Regional Office.

The cause of this financial problem is that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has been functioning at a flat-line budget for 10 years of $9 million per year. This has ignored inflationary increases in costs over those years, much less the need for increased funding to support the mandated duties of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. It is this history of diminished financial support for the U.S. Commission that has created the financial deficit and services should not be cut at this level to address that deficit. The citizens of North Dakota, and the North Dakota Advisory Commission to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, should not be deprived of the staff assistance of the Rocky Mountain Regional Office because of this history of under-funding.

Please feel free to contact us should you need any additional information. We ask for your assistance and support in avoiding the closure of the Rocky Mountain Regional Office of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.