City Bar Justice Center Urges Governor to Fully Fund IOLA to Support New Yorkers at Risk
New York, February 13, 2026 – The City Bar Justice Center applauds and echoes the New York City Bar Association’s respectful urging of New York Governor Kathy Hochul to include full spending authority for the Interest on Lawyer Account (IOLA) Fund in her forthcoming 30-day amendments to the 2027 Executive Budget.
Our organization’s voice on this topic speaks from our experience. For over four decades, the City Bar Justice Center’s hardworking team and dedicated pro bono volunteers have proudly served New Yorkers’ like “Anne” (alias), who as a Japanese-American had been confined to an internment camp during World War II. Anne later became terminally ill and desperately wanted to prepare a will as her condition worsened. After working with our pro bono attorney-supported Elder Law Project, Anne completed the necessary paperwork one week before her passing. “I think she was able to go peacefully largely because the City Bar Justice Center was able to work with her to complete her legal documents,” Anne’s nephew later shared.
Anne is one of over 27,000 New Yorkers in need whom City Bar Justice Center legal aid benefits each year. However, a substantial chunk of our organization’s access to justice mission is at risk due to proposed cuts in Governor Hochul’s Executive Budget for 2027. We are among over 80 civil legal aid organizations across New York that depend on annual IOLA grants to support large tranches of our work. As it currently stands, the Executive Budget does not grant IOLA the full $102.5 million requested for civil legal aid organizations like our own to carry out essential services. And, importantly, the missing funding is not from taxpayer dollars. Rather, IOLA funding is private and market-generated through interest on attorney escrow accounts and is already held by IOLA in trust accounts specifically authorized by statute to support civil legal services across New York.
Governor Hochul’s proposed budget is roughly $25 million shy of IOLA’s requested spending authority for already funded and awarded second-year grants as part of a five-year grant program that was implemented in 2024 when similar controversies over IOLA arose.
City Bar Justice Center Executive Director Kurt M. Denk said in a statement:
“The governor’s proposed budgetary approach to IOLA funding for 2027 would gut 20% – 25% from our organization’s second-largest single grant and seriously compromise our ability to help New Yorkers in need. Two years ago, during a similar controversy, a wide swath of the public interest legal community as well as the many large private firms and corporate legal departments that provide pro bono support for our work united to demand full IOLA funding. That effort prevailed then, and it absolutely must prevail now, when the stakes are even higher with federal funding instability, growing need among the most vulnerable in our communities, and a rare bipartisan consensus that affordability must center policy and political action. We must believe that Governor Hochul and the New York State Legislature will remain as committed to justice in these unprecedented times as we here at the Justice Center and at dozens of other legal aid organizations across New York, and are anxious to see that belief vindicated in the 30-day amendments.”
As our organization’s affiliate, the New York City Bar Association, has made clear, “without the additional $25 million in spending authority needed to fully fund IOLA’s request…[IOLA grant] reductions would result in job losses, diminished services for vulnerable communities, and the unraveling of carefully planned innovations – directly undermining the policy goals the Governor’s budget seeks to advance.”
For Anne and the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers in need who benefit from IOLA-supported civil legal aid each year, it is crucial that the Governor revises her proposed 2027 budget to include IOLA’s full requested funding authority.
About the City Bar Justice Center
The City Bar Justice Center furthers access to justice by addressing unmet civil legal needs of New Yorkers struggling with poverty and other systemic socioeconomic barriers. The Justice Center’s dozen civil justice projects are led by a staff of dedicated attorneys and support professionals who provide high-quality civil legal services through brief advice and information, referrals, and both limited scope and extended representation that benefit more than 27,000 New Yorkers each year who cannot afford to hire counsel. www.citybarjusticecenter.org