Social Security’s Office of Hearings Operations is now officially just “Hearings” according to a new memo. “Hearings” is divided into five “hubs.” These names sound like they’re trying too hard to sound new and different. Anyway, here are the heads of these “hubs”:
• Hope Grunberg, currently a National Hearing Center Administrative Law Judge, is now the Head of Hearings Hub A.
• Tanya Garrian, currently the Regional Chief Administrative Law Judge (RCALJ) for Northeast, is now the Head of Hearings Hub B.
• Michael Rodriguez, currently the RCALJ for Southeast, is now the Head of Hearings Hub C.
• Scott Kidd, currently the RCALJ for Mid-West/West, is now the Head of Hearings Hub D.
• Ray Souza, currently the RCALJ for Southwest, is now the Head of Hearings Hub E, in addition to his role as Acting Chief Administrative Law Judge
The assignment of hearing offices to the “hubs” completely scrambles geography and reason. Tucson and Queens are in the same hub. Charleston, SC and Sacramento are in another. Macon, GA and Honolulu are in another. And, dare I say it, why are ALJs in charge of Hubs? These are management positions and, on the whole, management is not what ALJs excel at. Who will handle questions about leave and such like? Who will handle it if a Hearing Office roof leaks? How will anyone have enough knowledge about local personnel to handle assigning new Hearing Office Chief ALJs?
Down the road other people will have to unscramble this mess.
33 comments:
Odd comment. HOCALJs have been the top of the management chain in OHO for as long as I can remember. As far as leave and a leaking roof, the HOD/HOMS/GS? Same as before?
To your point about "new HOCALJs," there are no more HOCALJs. They're being replaced with "MALJs," which is allegedly a HOCALJ without geographical restriction, who will supervise "pods" of ALJs throughout the hub.
Good question about why are ALJ‘s in charge, since they have no particular management skillset and certainly have a tendency to protect ALJ interests rather than pursue what’s good for the public or efficiency. The same question can be posed regarding the Office of Chief ALJ for OHO, and for the position of Hearing Office Chief ALJ within each of the 160+ hearing office. They hold fewer hearings and often don’t know what they are doing in terms of policy-compliant management practices, or don’t feel bound by them. Apparently SSA feels they need a judge in order to formally address issues with other judges. Like “why are you late for work?” But it has been that way essentially since the inception of OHO. All the nitty-gritty management tasks have always been delegated away from the management judges.
The reduction from 10 regions/hubs to 5 makes sense because then instead of having 10 Regional Chief ALJs and 10 regional management officers (the non-judges who do the real nuts and bolts regional management), along with 10 sets of employees supporting them, you have 5. The rest can go back to front line work for the public, like five more judges holding hearings, instead of the many redundant or unnecessary internal bureaucratic tasks regional office employees currently perform. The theory appears to be that the essential regional workloads can be carried out with fewer people in 5 regions with the intelligent use of software (and I’m not even referring to AI). The geographic grouping of the hubs doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, but with virtual work it also is not likely to have much of an impact. It’s just a change enabled by better technology over the last few decades.
Will the disruption caused by these changes actually accomplish efficiencies? Have they pruned too severely? Who knows, but on their face these changes at least have a rational basis. At a minimum you will have freed up a few dozen employees to do frontline work, which is a concrete, not a hypothetical, benefit
Basically they realized it was too much work for four offices so they carved out a fifth. What a nightmare for fees now because if you represent claimants in say Illinois you are having to work with three different rcaljs now or hubcaljs whatever acronym they come up with instead of what used to be the one for your geographic area.
FISERV is down 70% year to date. Frank is incapable of running SSA or the IRS or anything else he has ever done. His puppets and paid PR is very good at covering up his careeer of failures.
Why did they split some cities' hearing offices into different hubs? Phoenix, Los Angeles, and New York (downtown and Varick are in one hub; Bronx and Queens in another) all have this issue. Did they have AI divide up the hearing offices or something?
Having done this practice for almost 40 years now, I can say that I have seen 'em come, seen 'em go. When I started, hearings were held at OHA, then came ODAR, then came OHO, and I guess, now, "H"? None of these reorgs have resulted in better or more efficient service, and they cost time and money. If SSA spent half the time they spend on reorganizing in actually adjudicating claims, our clients would be so much better off.
So, pray tell, who do I call about a decision in a fee agreement rejection that has been pending of eight months. The issue is not complicated.
The ALJ rejected the fee agreement because she said there were two appointments of representative in the record even though the other rep had both withdrawn and waived the fee and that is in the file.
No one can tell you, not even insiders. No one has any idea who to call about much of anything these days, we don't even get accurate org charts of all the changes.
Those employees who were “freed” up to do frontline work are all already gone, this is just bringing some of them back because they couldn’t manage with 4 regions.
That’s the million dollar question now because will they reshuffle fee orders to different hubs? What a mess. My understanding from calling was they weren’t even doing them during the shutdown.
Then it sounds like they’re trying to reach the optimal level of staffing.
The positions of HOD, HOMS and GS will be eliminated. No secret they are on the chopping block. Need to call GSA? Fill out a form on an app, like IT support. I can see writers and legal assistants centralized again.
Where are you possibly getting that information from there is zero suggestion from brass that they are changing HO structure. Plus someone has to manage the buildings.
Reaching optimal levels of staffing by forcing all the most senior experienced staff to resign….cope harder Leland
So no local management at all for thousands of people? Sure.
@ 5:49 Sounds purely speculative to me. I recognize that poster from before (the GSA quip stood out). Generally very hyperbolic.
I've also heard from several sources that local structure is not changing. Allegedly, the HOCALJ position is going away, but not sure where that stands.
Bookmark it…depending on the size of the office it’ll be one or two management officials on site. All under one title. No HOD/GS
So if an office has a HOMS/GS/HOD (1 of each) right now, what would an office with 30-40 people end up with? And what would the remainders end up doing? Drafting?
Ha 3:43, there was already pretty optimal levels of staffing in early 2025. All of the people brought in after Drumpf took office are dumb and unethical.
So Frank left and cashed out at FISERV before their lies became public. How long before he leaves SSA and IRS prior to their lies becoming public?
The Leland schtick is getting old. Why not just win the argument on substance?
Historically, most of the HOCALJs do a poor job because they lack basic management experience. Some judges transition to management without sufficient practical leadership experience, which will hinder the office and at the end of the day its the HODs.This new structure is not going to work and in a couple months they will be back to the drawing board.
Bottom line, judges should focus on hearings-their core responsibility and compensation-while relying on specialist for non-judicial work;leadership roles demand practical experience. This may not be popular but remove all judges from management roles and have them solely concentrate on the job they are suppose to do-HEARINGS! Let the non-judicial experts manage the workload. That would be a cost saving. OPM should really do a thorough audit on the role of an ALJ and all these management positions that were secretly created.
"Good question about why are ALJ‘s in charge, since they have no particular management skillset" like they have a medical background to decide disability. smh
Yeah, let GS-13 laypersons tell ALJs how to do their jobs. What could possibly go wrong?
GS-13s have done an excellent job moving workloads and making sure hearings get held. To the comment above, ALJs need that support and nothing usually goes wrong. Most ALJs appreciate the support and don't understand how to effectively work their daily reports. Every office has one or two bad apples but it is the GS and the HODs that run the show. The is the hidden truth no-one wants to discuss.
So the placing of a GS13 in charge of an office with ALJ;s who are in a separate pay scale but were once GS 15 is the problem. No one in the Government can conceive of a situation where a lower grade employee can manage/supervise a higher grade employee. And there is no way they would install a management professional in an SES grade to run a hearing office. All this despite the fact that ALJs put in charge of offices have no particular management experience or ability and generally do a piss-poor job of being managers. And yes, there are exceptions.
I don't believe anyone is saying to have GS-13 supervise an ALJ, they are just more effective at running the operations of an office with the HOD. The supervisory structure of the ALJ is broken. HOCALJs are ineffective and it hasn't worked in years. They need to come up with a better system to supervise ALJs. It should be rather easy if they had proper metrics instead of the pretend 50 cases.
Ah “centralization.” That will solve our backlogs. Centralized to where and to who exactly? Where is this magical place with experienced employees to process the work, Andy? I have an idea! Why don’t you start by centralizing the 10s of thousands of phone calls we get to one component. Oh, you already decentralized the calls? Is this like reverse psychology?
The hubs will run the sites. You’ll have a hod who serves as a director of sorts for several sites. Then those sites will report directly to that person. The entire goal is getting rid of layers of management. And yes, the attorney GSs will become writers, etc. The non attorney supervisors will be overpaid doing gs11 work.
(Also there aren’t many sites that have 40+ employees anymore)
No one has management experience until they start managing. Your perception of this “problem” is deeply, deeply silly and absurd.
@5:02pm….these are offices with physical locations. Someone has to let the security guard in, run fire drills, clean clogged toilets and all the rest the grunt work on site management does. They do way more than push cases around. If someone breaks a window at an office how can someone from a Hun in New York get to a site in California to secure the building. The unions won’t allow the lawyers or case techs to do that.
The local and hub chiefs aren't knocking out hearings. Hope G is notorious for giggling her way ahead.
NHCs were started before everyone was doing video hearings, and the judges there continue to do less work as "management" judges.
Change has been needed for some time.
I imagine it was run like a fantasy football draft.
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