The financially strapped U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted yesterday to lay off employees, order a staff furlough and close two of six regional offices to save about $800,000.
The decision to cut about 9 percent of the budget was followed by news that at least four auditing firms had declined to examine the commission's financial affairs because of the poor conditions of its records and because the agency has not had an audit in 12 years, according to commission member Peter N. Kirsanow.
 
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The seven-member commission agreed to submit to an audit two weeks ago to put its finances in order and persuade Congress to approve a budget increase. The budget has fluctuated between $8 million and $9 million for more than a decade. As inflation rose, its staff fell from about 100 to 67 today.
The announcements were a major blow for the agency that was once called the conscience of the federal government, but they were not unexpected. The commission, which is deeply in debt, failed to pay $75,000 in rent last year and did not honor a $188,000 partial payment to employees who won an equal-opportunity complaint against it.
"This place is completely out of control and spiraling into a ditch," Kirsanow said. The commission has no budget ledger, no budget director and no financial director and has been underpaying its employees' benefits package.
The bipartisan commission was established in the 1950s to investigate civil rights abuses, but during the Reagan administration it fell into wrangling between conservatives and liberals that continues to define it.
Wade Henderson, executive director of the liberal Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, suggested that the Republican Congress starved the commission of funds so it could not fulfill its mission and is now blaming it for fiscal irresponsibility.
"I'm really troubled to hear the commission is furloughing and dismissing staff," Henderson said. "It's subterfuge for dismantling the professional staff of the commission so that it can't complete its work."
But conservatives in Congress and on the commission blame former chairman Mary Frances Berry for financial mismanagement over 10 years.
During the meeting, commissioner Michael Yaki, a new member of the liberal wing, suggested the agency develop a three-year plan for balancing its budget and requesting more money from Congress.
"I do not believe that we need to go as far as we're going at this moment to maintain fiscal health," he said.
Chairman Gerald A. Reynolds said the agency must right itself now. "These problems have been festering for a long time. All the options we have are bad. It's just a matter of picking the best of the bad choices," he said.
Reynolds, Yaki and another new commissioner, Ashley L. Taylor Jr., have declined to hire assistants to hold down costs. Abigail Thernstrom, the vice chairman, said the layoffs and furloughs were necessary but said the choices "were just terrible" and lamented the way politicians "are just starving the commission."
Staff director Kenneth L. Marcus said that four staff analysts will be released. He declined to comment on when other layoffs will occur or on the length of the furlough, saying his office will determine that in coming weeks. Marcus also would not say which field offices will be closed or how many of those employees will lose their jobs.
The commission maintains regional offices in Atlanta; Chicago; Denver; Kansas City, Kan.; Los Angeles; and Washington, D.C., where workers collect evidence of civil rights abuses and are counseled by a group of appointed advisers.
One field office director said it will be difficult for the commission to fulfill its mandate without the assistance of satellite offices.
