Effects Of Continuing Resolution

From the Federal Times, which is not afraid of using a lot of paragraphs:

Agencies may have extra difficulty replacing departing employees and training existing ones during the next five months [while most of the government is operating under a continuing resolution that funds operations at the same rate as the last fiscal year]. ...

Richard Warsinskey, at the Social Security Administration office in Cleveland, is one manager who’s frustrated by the extended delay of his agency’s 2009 appropriation. During a CR, hiring slows down considerably, he said.

“We spend a lot of money recruiting, but we’re only able to hire in these short windows when we’re not under a CR. We should be able to hire when we have an opening and the right person,” he said.

The CR will frustrate the agency’s ability to catch up on a 750,000-case backlog for benefits claims, Warsinskey said. Cases wait more than 18 months on average to be heard by administrative law judges because not enough staff members are on hand to prepare the cases for review.

Congress appropriated $150 million more than the president requested in 2008 in order to reduce that backlog, said Jessica Klement, government affairs director for the Federal Managers Association.

“Constituents were calling because they weren’t getting their benefits, and they were dying while they waited,” she said.

The extra money in 2008 allowed SSA to hire nearly 200 administrative law judges and make a dent in the backlog, although that progress may be lost after five months under a CR.

For now, SSA will cut back on spending for needs such as replacing aging computers and software. It will also order fewer office supplies, keeping a bare minimum on hand, said Warsinskey, who until recently served as president of National Council of Social Security Management Associations.

There also will be more training by satellite and less travel, he said.