Now, 20 months later, the new team has made progress toward backing up the boast. From a nuisance group known mainly for filing amicus briefs, the foundation has become a gadfly with a sting. "They aren't a nightmare," says the Atlanta Public Schools' general counsel, Amy Mil Totenberg. "They

Gerald R. Weber Jr., legal director for the Georgia ACLU, says the Southeastern Legal Foundation is not a conservative counterpart to his group since it "is more often involved in economic and tax issues." Weber says he admires the foundation for its "imaginative view of litigation." "They look for and find something obscure" to support their issues, he says. "To that extent they are effective."

A less charitable view is offered by Emmet J. Bondurant II, who helped represent the school system against Proctor and the foundation. He calls the group "a judicial counterpart to the militia organizations, assaulting government with a right wing agenda."

Proctor responds that Bondurant is upset "because I beat his ass in the local option sales case" involving the Atlanta schools. "I'm a libertarian," he adds. "I'm not ashamed of it." Totenberg calls the Southeastern Legal Foundation projects "a terrible use of the legal system." Glavin responds, "If what government is doing is wrong, then government should be challenged."

Liberals had been challenging the government in court long before conservatives started doing it, points out former Congressman Benjamin B. Blackburn III, the Southeastern Legal Foundation's first director and president. Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU are among groups that Blackburn says have long used the courts to support political positions. "Conservative supporters were dropping the ball," says Blackburn, by not doing the same thing.

Today, government contract bidding that favors minority groups and government-funded grants to the arts are some of Southeastern Legal Foundation's targets. But taxes remain a principal cause. Glavin gives the foundation credit for $105 million in tax cuts during the past year and a half. The Southeastern Legal Foundation saved Georgians $40 million, he says, by helping repeal the state intangibles tax on stock and other non-real property. The foundation sued the state over the tax, a move that, along with a U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning a similar tax in North Carolina, prodded the General Assembly into repealing it in March (Daily Report, Aug. 6, 1996).

Glavin also points to a 16 percent cut in the tax that employers pay to fund the Georgia unemployment insurance fund. It amounts to $65 million a year, according to the state Labor Department. That battle was his idea, says Glavin, a non-lawyer, and one he could fight on his own since it did not involve going to court. Glavin says a report that crossed his desk one day revealed that the state fund could support unemployed workers for more than five years. The foundation publicized the report, and the General Assembly got interested. "A lot of what we achieve is outside the courtroom," says Glavin.

Proctor had earned a reputation as a tax rebel by overturning the entire 1991 Fulton property assessment and the Georgia used- car sales tax in 1992. Upon become chairman of the foundation, Proctor invited Henry D. Granberry II, a lawyer from Mississippi with whom he had gone to Vanderbilt in the 1970s, to become its vice president and general counsel. With the new team in place, Glavin says, the foundation's productivity soared. From devoting 80 percent of its efforts to amicus briefs and 20 percent to litigation, it reversed the proportions, he says.

Last year the Southeastern Legal Foundation joined a suit against the Stephens County School District, where two female students had been taken by school counselors for Pap smears and HIV/AIDS tests and given birth control prescriptions all without their parents' consent. School officials say the girls were simply given rides as had others previously, according to the Washington Times. Glavin says the foundation heard about the case from a newspaper article and contacted the parents' local counsel, E.W. "Chip" Angell, with an offer to join the suit. It is in the suit to defend parental rights, Glavin says.

Parker, who worked at the foundation from the mid-1980s till 1995, says that is not the kind of case the foundation took during its first 18 years. "The issues of this case are more social than economic," says Parker, "and that wasn't normally the primary focus."

The foundation remains on the brink of a legal battle with the FBI and the White House. It offered to represent Aldrich, the former White House security guard Aldrich, author of Unlimited Access. For months the FBI and White House refused to clear the anti-Clinton book's publication, even though no security measures were breached, says Glavin. The FBI has recommended suing Aldrich for failing to complete the pre- publication review, according to Legal Times, a Washington newspaper affiliated with the Daily Report.

Glavin says the case lies within the foundation's territory, since Washington is in the organization's region and the case would raise a free speech issue. As for the future, Southeastern Legal officials foresee further growth, including a Tallahassee office, Glavin says. It would be the group's first office outside Atlanta. The organization's goal? Limiting government, say its leaders, including general counsel Granberry. "As long as there is government," he says, "there is a goal."