Apr 20, 2016

Florida ALJ Arrested

     From the Tampa Tribune:
An administrative law judge with the Social Security Administration in Tampa was arrested late Sunday and charged with driving under the influence, police said. Two witnesses saw Glen H. Watkins, 42, strike a parked car while driving a 2014 Honda Pilot on Davis Boulevard at 11:14 p.m., Tampa police said. Watkins’ blood-alcohol content was later measured at 0.151 and 0.163, records show. The legal limit for Florida drivers is 0.08.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

He probably couldn't take being told to ignore evidence and due process and just keep it under 40%

Anonymous said...

Seeing and dealing with broken lives and devastation day in and day out is depressing as hell... substance abuse is probably very prevalent.

Anonymous said...

He has a low pay rate, high production, and no one seems to like him. I'm sure SSA would hate to see him have to go to rehab.

Anonymous said...

I will be very interested to see how ODAR handles this matter. They have tried to dismiss ALJs who have only been accused (but not charged) with crimes, and have dismissed at least one ALJ who was charged but not convicted of a crime. I think I see a charge of "conduct unbecoming" and an MSPB action for dismissal in Judge Watkins future, courtesy of the compassionate legal scholars who manage the Agency. No matter that if he were an elected State judge he would be reprimanded for a first offense such as this in most jurisdictions.

Anonymous said...

The posting of this incident and piling on with the mug shot is below the belt. It should be removed as it has no relevance to the problems of SSA/ODAR and the public. Atty reps get DUIs too...

Anonymous said...

@5:34. Apparently some jurisdictions are much more tolerant than those with which I am familiar. An attorney with a DUI may have some explaining to do to his/her state bar, but not be disbarred. However, holding the office of judge places one in a special elevated status in which a higher level of conduct is to be expected. Personally, I've not seen judges in state courts re-elected or retained after a DUI.

Anonymous said...

My heart doesn't bleed for this guy too much. It will probably take the MSPB 3 or 4 years to remove him. He will be paid that entire time while not having to do any work.

Anonymous said...

@5:34 it is not the same as attorneys in the private bar getting arrested.
Also, it's interesting that when Mr. Hall has posted stories about lower level SSA employees getting arrested, we don't hear any complaints about hitting below the belt. This guy doesn't deserve "sacred cow" treatment just because he is an alj.

The alj is a federal employee who has been arrested and charged with a serious crime. If the allegations are true, the guy could have killed people.

There are principled and justifiable reasons for reprinting the story on this blog. As someone noted, SSA's data shows that the guy has denied or dismissed over 70 percent of the claims before him. That's a high rate of dismissals/denials. The individuals who filed those claims (and their reps) certainly have a right to know about the arrest and whether the alj has had psychological problems that have undermined his ability to think rationally. ODAR certainly is not going to disclose any information unless the guy gets convicted. But in the meantime, the public has a right to know about the allegations and pending charges. It seems like a public service to post the information here to a wider audience.

Anonymous said...

A lower payer.......is he one of the types that craps on claimants that have references to alcohol in their medical records?

Anonymous said...

No one escapes karma. No one is beyond redemption.

Anonymous said...

He pays 37% of decisions. Not nearly as bad as you all make it seem

Anonymous said...

That's less than 10% below the national pay rate. Sounds pretty good to me. No outlier here. Plus, he hasn't been found guilty of anything yet. Presumed innocent until found guilty.. And the reps favorite quip, "well, your Honor, we contend he couldn't afford medicine so he was self-medicating." Gotta love it!!!

Anonymous said...

I do think it is appropriate to post this news item but schadenfreude is unseemly and unprofessional.

Tim said...

Tampa ODAR stats for Watkins are 26% dismissed, 27% approved and 47% denied. All ALJ in Tampa have a 46% approval rate (including Watkins), compared to 45% for Florida and 44% nationwide! To characterize him as anything other than a Denier... Just read the comments on the ODAR site.

Anonymous said...

@ 636
As has been stated numerous times, including dismissals when calculating approval rate is erroneous and shows a fundamental desire to slant the numbers. The only correct measure is number of cases paid divided by number of decisions, omitting dismissals completely.

Tim said...

Those are ODAR'S stats!

Anonymous said...

Who says dismissals should not be included in calculating approval rate? Aljs, right? Why? Because dismissals help boost alj production #s, right? They're quick to do. Isn't ODAR mainly about quotas (euphemisticaly called "goals") - and don't dismissals help meet those quotas.

Anonymous said...

99% of the times dismissal occurs when the claimant fails to appear either because he's working, or knows he's not disabled. There's no reason to include dismissals in calculating an ALJs pay rate. But reps whine over and over because they know including dismissals makes the pay rate appear lower.

Scenario. If I have 10 hearings. I dismiss 6 because they don't show up, but pay all 4 who do, are you seriously going to argue that my pay rate is 40%? If so, you guys are nuts

Anonymous said...

In the last 10 years the only dismissal I ever had to deal with as a rep was one an ALJ improperly determined. It took most of a year to correct that mess. I doubt many reps deal regularly with dismissals, because most reps don't bring non disabled or working claimants to hearings. I don't want the pay rate lower and it is not difficult to distinguish outlier denial prone ALJs. A 37% allowance rate is an outlier.

Anonymous said...

First of all, before parroting the term "outlier" in the alj production context, it might help to read Malcolm Gladwell's book.

Background story: when Gladwell's book came out, an ODAR official (who shall remain nameless) started misappropriating the term "outlier" and applying it to aljs with approval rates that he thought were too high. By using the "outlier" term pejoratively, he clearly either didn't read Gladwell's book or didn't understand it. So now, like Orwellian automatons, other ODAR employees similarly misuse the term. Nobody in ODAR wants to be labelled and targeted negatively as an "outlier."

Secondly, isn't a dismissal rate of 26 percent high - whether counted with the approvals/denial rates or not? Are 26 percent of claimants nationally just not showing up or deciding to go back to work?

There is no question that ODAR management has a threshold number of dismissals that it expects an alj can meet before drawing negative "outlier" attention to himself or herself -- because everything in ODAR has a number, which is based on information from the ODAR data hunters and gatherers and manipulators. And every good ODAR employee works to the numbers to meet the quotas to avoid being labeled an ODAR "outlier."

But does the data consider whether an alj with a 26 percent dismissal rate goes through the regulatory hoops to make sure that proper notice is given to each of those claimants before the dismissals go out?

Anonymous said...

@ 12:06 PM
"But does the data consider whether an alj with a 26 percent dismissal rate goes through the regulatory hoops to make sure that proper notice is given to each of those claimants before the dismissals go out?"

I am assuming this is rhetorical.

In order to go through the regulatory hoops, the ODAR staff would first need to have knowledge of their existence. I have found very few ODAR staff to be familiar with HALLEX despite it being the policy manual by which they are to abide.

Anonymous said...

The first responsibility is for the claimant to notify Social Security any time they move. It just doesn't happen. How many times do I have Reps come in and say, "I can't locate the claimant." Way too many, I can tell you that..

Anonymous said...

LOL, Malcolm Gladwell did not invent the term "outlier" and his cruddy book doesn't really explain them well. If you'd care to learn what "outlier" really means, I'd suggest any intro stats/probability text book. Or even Wikipedia. There's a formula; the term is rigorously defined.