Proposed Rules On Scheduling Hearings Coming Out Monday

The Social Security Administration is having a set of proposed regulations entitled "Setting the Time and Place for a Hearing before an Administrative Law Judge" published in the Federal Register on Monday. Here is Social Security's summary:

We propose to amend our rules to clarify that the agency is responsible for setting the time and place for a hearing before an administrative law judge (ALJ). Consistent with our regulations at lower levels of the administrative process, we propose to use “we” or “us” in the rules setting the time and place for a hearing. These changes will ensure greater flexibility in scheduling hearings both in person and via video teleconferencing and will aid us in our effort to increase efficiency in the hearing process and reduce the number of pending hearings. The number of cases awaiting a hearing has reached historic proportions, and efforts toward greater efficiency are critical to addressing this problem.

The notice says "We expect that we will need to exercise this authority in only those situations where an ALJ is not scheduling the number of hearings that we consider sufficient." However, this limitation is not an enforceable promise. The apparent intent here is to centralize the scheduling of hearings, at least for some ALJs, giving those ALJs no control over their docket. Each ALJ involved will get their hearing schedule for a month and they will jolly well hear those cases or else. As the notice puts it "... through this proposed rule, we could ensure that those ALJs who do not process a sufficient number of cases have enough of them docketed for hearings to drive down and eliminate the backlog by 2013."

Incidentally, the proposal estimates huge costs for going ahead with this -- as claimants have their hearings quicker and get on benefits quicker.

In my opinion, the idea that this is the solution for Social Security's backlog problem is absurd. The problem is lack of personnel. ALJs are already hearing too many cases. The quality has already been badly affected. Trying to go ahead with this is just going to cause quality to decline even further and create a huge number of practical problems.