I received a helpful, but anonymous, response to my post about the proposed quality assurance reviews of Administrative Law Judge decisions that corrects a misunderstanding I had. I imagine I am not the only one confused by this. I have no way of asking permission to post it, but I see no way it could be traced back, so here it is:
Your comments and observations were interesting and mostly on-target. However, I believe your comment number 7 is predicated on a misinterpretation of the term "Regional Attorney." You base your comment on the assumption that the references to the "Regional Attorney" are, in fact references to the "Regional Chief Counsel" in the Office of the General Counsel (OGC). I believe you are wrong in this interpretation. Regional Attorneys are located in each of the ten Offices of the Regional Chief ALJ, within ODAR, and report to the RCALJ. They may or may not have supervisory responsibilities. Regional Chief Counsels, on the other hand, are the primary OGC executives in each region, and report to the General Counsel in Baltimore. I believe that the Plan's references to Regional Attorneys are references to the ODAR attorneys, not to any attorney (or anyone else) in OGC. To my knowledge ... there have never been any serious discussions about having OGC involved in any substantive manner in the adjudication process. (The closest was the Counsel to Council short-term project several years ago. Even then, OGC had no discretionary involvement in the outcome of any individual claim).
Although your assumptions would arguably be correct if OGC became involved in the hearing process, I do not believe that is the Agency's intent.
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