Here is a note in my firm's database from a legal assistant who had called one of Social Security's payment centers on February 19 about a fee petition, that is a request that the agency approve an attorney fee, that had been submitted in a case won at the reconsideration level:
Spoke w/ Kathy. Once I gave her the ssn, she said they have it but the BA [Benefit Authorizer] has not had a chance to get to it. There's 70 cases that are ahead of this one. Told her this one is from April 2018 and she said they have cases they haven't worked from 2017.I can't take that fee until the agency approves it. I don't usually use the fee petition process but sometimes I have to. Many, perhaps most, attorneys take on no fee petition cases because of hassles like this. That leaves some claimants unrepresented. I don't understand anyone who says that the fee petition process is a reasonable alternative to the fee agreement cap. The only realistic alternative to the fee agreement cap is to leave the practice.
It's not just fee petition cases, but regular fee agreement cases, too, that are taking longer and longer to process and send out attorney fees. It's frustrating to see the files backing up on the shelves waiting for fees while the payment centers further delay in releasing them. NOSSCR has addressed this concern and guessed that the priority to bring down the hearing backlogs has lead to other areas (i.e. processing attorney fees) slowing down.
ReplyDeleteThey certainly have slowed down. Occasionally, one's case would land on a desk that believed in turning things out, but no more.
ReplyDeleteUnless required, I wouldn't do a fee petition, especially on a reconsideration. Of course, sometimes we have no choice, but approving fee petitions seems to be the last thing to do on everyone's to do list. To the person waiting on their fee petition approval, you can collect the fee and hold it in an escrow account until the fee and the amount is approved. But you must have an escrow account in a bank and not an envelope under your mattress.
BA's are so behind when it comes to this, what I will call, out of the ordinary case. I have a case right now that requires the BA to recalulate the WC offset calculation and issue the appropriate notice. This has not happened for months and when I last spoke with the BA, they literally said "my supervisor has not authorized me to work on this, other workloads are being given priority." I am not sure what those other workloads are. One thing I do know is that my client is being denied due process as his benefits have been reduced but he has not been provided the notice required under the regulations. Without a notice, we have nothing we can appeal.
ReplyDeleteThe payment centers are all a mess and no one at SSA seems to care.
I called one "module manager" at least 25 times regarding a fee. Voicemail every time. Are these people that swamped?
ReplyDelete@2:51pm
ReplyDeleteWorkers' Compensation offset is handled by a CA. BAs only effectuate determinations.
For attorney fees, depending on the regional center, apparently positions called a BA, CA or Recon can process fee petitions; maybe even more than those three.
Unless your group has two words that starts with C and D, the fee petitions were almost always reasonable and rarely changed.
But who knows anymore, like commentators on other blog stories post, I left for a more professional agency with no workplace shenanigans and get a nice promotion out of it doing something that I'm eager to do a full 8 hours a day.
She got someone on the phone - give that woman a raise! Voicemail only and no return calls.
ReplyDeleteTell TPTB up in Falls Church and Woodlawn that they can't just wither RO and other centralized staff down to the bones and expect workloads like this to be handled well.
ReplyDeleteLet's not forget BA is a terrible, low-grade job housed in a demoralizing, massive, trenchantly run outfit where they mostly deal with people irate that things are taking so long and handling oftentimes complex, messy calculations, etc.
ReplyDeleteFee petitions in the PC that are on claims below the ALJ are decided by the claims technical leads in the PC. They have dwindled their numbers down to a little over a handful in the whole PC and this is only 1 case load out many that gets assigned to them. I would bet it is going to get a lot worse based on retirements, since they are all ready to fly out the door.
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