Charlotte Observer On Hearing Backlogs

Some excerpts from an article in the Charlotte Observer (see also a sidebar piece giving a history of how the article came to be written and a touching multimedia story):

Nearly all American workers pay the federal government for insurance in case they get too sick to keep a job. But thousands of disabled workers wait longer for help in the Charlotte region than almost anywhere else in the nation. ...

In one case, a Gastonia man took his own life.

David "Joey" McKee, 21, couldn't afford medicine to treat his manic depression and waited two years to learn whether he qualified for disability. In March, he jumped from an overpass into traffic on Interstate 85 near Kings Mountain. ...

The Carolinas have about 48,500 pending disability cases, including 8,704 in the Charlotte region. Waits at Charlotte's Disability Adjudication and Hearing Office rank among the longest nationwide, 125 out of 141 offices, a recent national report says. ...

Charlotte judge Duncan Frye said judges in his office work "exceptionally hard" to reduce wait times but do not have enough support staff to collect applicants' medical records and prepare cases for hearings. Budget constraints have left the disability court with vacancies, said Frye, who is also executive vice president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges, which represents disability judges nationwide. ...

Through interviews, documents and the results of a Freedom of Information Act request, the Observer found:

• Charlotte judges, on average, decided fewer cases than judges in other offices in the Carolinas: 375 cases per judge last year, compared with a combined average of 427 at offices in Greensboro, Raleigh, Columbia, Charleston and Greenville, S.C.

• At any given time, half of the six courtrooms at the Charlotte hearing office are not in use. The Observer spent about 40 hours monitoring the office this month.

Around 3 p.m. on a Friday, an office worker observed an empty waiting area when an applicant failed to show up. She said to no one in particular, "We might as well go home." The office closes at 4:30, but lawyers for applicants say hearings are rarely scheduled after 3 p.m. Judge Dennis Dugan issued 188 rulings last year, the fewest among judges in the Charlotte office. Frye, Kevin Foley, Ronald Osborn and Robert Egan also issued fewer than 400 decisions. Saul Nathanson issued the most with 484.