The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of personnel who make disability determinations for Social Security, has released a letter it has sent to the governor of Maryland. and another letter it has sent to the governor of California. For historical reasons not worth explaining here, disability examiners work at state government agencies, but all salaries and expenses associated with them are paid for by the federal government. Heck, their e-mail addresses are something like nademember@ssa.gov. But they are still employees of state governments. Because of budgetary problems, the states of Maryland iand California are furloughing some disability examiners. NADE is ticked since the state budget problems have nothing to do with the disability examiners.
Social Security needs to do something to keep this from happening in the future.
Social Security needs to do something to keep this from happening in the future.
If the DDS of any state does not provide the services they contracted to provide, SSA should not make the contract payments!
ReplyDeleteThis is probably O'Malley blowing smoke for the stimulus bill. Every time there might be a budget cut goverment always say a school or fire station is going to be closed to stir things up and this is more of the same. He should start with his bloated staff if he needs to make cuts.
ReplyDeleteLess days being worked by thousands of DDS employees, means less claims adjudicated and less claims moving forward at other levels in the process. All of this equals BACKLOGS. Backlogs are sure to get worse. What is the Commissioner doing about this? The money is his, but it looks like state governors are not spending it as required in their contract with SSA.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like the problems are going to be much worse than just "furloughs" for these folks. Why aren't the big bosses saying anything about this? Where is Astrue and his deputy commissioners? Are they hiding because they don't know what to do yet?
the problem is more complex than one would think......
ReplyDeletethe regulations says the states cannot impose hiring freezes, etc., however in reality and practice, SSA is almost powerless to enforce these, since most state employees are tied into collective bargaining agreements....that have seniority and lay off clauses......
for the same reason that states can't pay DDS employees more than other state employees.....it rare that DDS employees can be exempted from the economic consequences that are inflicted on state employees in these times.
having been a state DDS employee and currently an SSA employee - with many DDS friends......I've heard the reasons for years......
the way around it for some states in the past - was to take the furlough days and then get SSA to authorize overtime to make up the lost days.......
a number of states are already working overtime to deal with the workloads.....
Overtime is not a simple compensation...
ReplyDeleteAn employee must work 40 hrs in a week to earn overtime pay. So, OT cannot be earned during the furlough weeks. Who the heck is going to work
the "OT" hours during a furlough week to only be paid regular wages?
And if OT is being authorized, it' likely only going to produce a level of production (if at all) that brings the respective DDS back of expected target goals.
What a big mess...SSA must not be happy about this.