Social Security is closing its field office in Newburgh, NY. Predictably, this is drawing opposition from local political leaders. The appropriations bill favored by Republicans in the House of Representatives would ban field office closures while failing to give the agency enough money to keep them open. How would that work?
I suspect if the bill passes they'll just "officially" keep the office open but convert it to a contact station with no employees assigned to it.
ReplyDeleteThey've done that in the past when the politicians get infected with stupid.
This Newburgh Office has been a disaster for years. By far the worst FO I deal with in NY. That being said, Newburgh serves a huge population, so where are they planning to move these cases? I certainly hope it is not the Poughkeepsie FO, which has also been struggling with staffing issues the last few years.
ReplyDeleteSSA also closed the Kingston NY FO about 10 years back...and the transition period to the Poughkeepsie FO was handled extremely poorly. Attorney assignments and fees were affected for multiple years.
Why ask the question regarding the GOP and office closures? All they need to do, and they do it successfully, is gum up the works, make it death by a 1000 cuts and then bluster and pontificate about how f*d up things are. It's just part of their slow march plan.
ReplyDeleteShould have read the article. They are moving to a newly built office in Middletown...which is farther from the more populated area of Orange County bordering the Hudson river. There are no large population centers west of Middletown, so SSA's explanation that this is a more "centralized" location is clearly false.
ReplyDeleteSSA also blindsided my local Congressman, Pat Ryan, whose office has been an essential resource for my clients in dealing with the Newburgh's office routine errors and very poor customer service. If they are not making major leadership/staffing changes for the FO, this move makes zero sense.
If the government cared they’d just build permanent FO installations owned by the gov. For all we know, the landlord declined renewal or there were facility issues. No one in SSA is seeking to intentionally disservice the public. We didn’t sign up for that.
ReplyDeleteI have only worked in 4 SSA offices but the government owned none of them. They were leased. The current one has a 15 year lease.
DeleteI'd like to see the attrition rate at FO's over the summer. Maybe more offices to close just due to lack of staff.
ReplyDelete