From today's
Federal Register:
We are extending for 2 years our rule authorizing attorney advisors to conduct certain prehearing procedures and to issue fully favorable decisions. The current rule will expire on August 10, 2011. In this final rule, we are extending the sunset date to August 9, 2013. We are making no other substantive changes.
By the way, I have not been seeing attorney advisor decisions lately. Is this merely a local phenomenon or are their fewer attorney advisor decisions nationally?
I have received a few of these recently and have been actively seeking (and usually receiving)them for many months and years. It certainly has not been an issue in my area (NYC metro).
ReplyDeleteI have also seen a recent reduction in OTRs written by Attorney Advisors.
ReplyDeleteOur local ODAR is not doing them per se. Just had a case that I discussed with the senior atty, who also wrote up the fully favorable, but had it signed by an ALJ.
ReplyDeletealso, there are SIGNIFICANTLY less senior attorneys than ALJ's...so of course there would be less decisions issued by them.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that they are experimenting with a Virtual Screening Unit. Local Senior Attys get siphoned off and are assigned cases from across the nation to review while they participate in the VSU. Local management in some offices has responded by changing the workload of the remaining Senior Attys - rather than allow them to screen half the time, they do no screening and all decision writing. OTR requests are now sent to the ALJs rather than the Senior Attorneys.
ReplyDeleteIt is a shame local management can get away with this. I am surprised that the Senior Attorneys have not filed grievances. How can they maintain their GS 13 rating without screening or issuing decisions?