"Celebrity Files"

I have never had a client with a "celebrity file", but I have heard of them over the years. Apparently, there are some problems with keeping them secret. Here is the complete text of a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General, or at least as much as they released to the public:

Our objective was to assess controls over access to personally identifiable information in the Social Security Administration's (SSA) Celebrity File.

We are encouraged to learn that SSA has taken steps to prevent, limit, and detect unauthorized access to personally identifiable information in the Celebrity File. We recognize SSA is committed to ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of personally identifiable information. However, we believe SSA has the opportunity to take additional steps to enhance its electronic and physical security controls and reduce its risk of unauthorized access to Celebrity File information.

This report contains restricted information for official use. Distribution is limited to authorized officials.

Senate Republicans Back Off Shutting Down Government

The Hill reports that Senate Republicans are backing off threats to close down the government by preventing action on a continuing funding resolution -- so that they could get a vote on increased offshore oil drilling. The article quotes Senator Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) as saying, “No one in our caucus that I know of is seriously even uttering the word ‘shutdown.’ ”

NCSSMA Statement On Social Security Appropriations

The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE) website contains a September 11, 2008 statement by the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA) on Social Security's appropriations situation. Oddly, the statement is not available on the NCSSMA website. NADE is an organization of the personnel who make initial and reconsideration determinations upon Social Security disability claims. NCSSMA is an organization of Social Security management personnel. Here are a few excerpts from the NCSSMA statement:

Due to budget constraints in recent years the amount of administrative funding the Social Security Administration (SSA) has received through the annual appropriations process has been significantly below the level necessary to keep up with the agency’s workloads. ...

As a result, the backlog of unprocessed disability claims has grown to unprecedented levels and the system is now in a state of crisis ...

The President’s proposed budget for SSA’s administrative funding for Fiscal Year 2009 is $10.327 billion, $582 million more than SSA’s enacted funding level for Fiscal Year 2008. This budget is a positive step toward improving SSA services. However, nearly $457 million of the proposed increase would be used to keep up with expenses such as increased rental costs, guard costs, and salaries. This document provides an overview of the areas where SSA is struggling with its workloads and details why additional funding is necessary above the President’s proposed budget to provide an appropriate level of service to the public. ...

As of August 2008 about 767,000 cases, a record high, were awaiting a hearing on an appealed claim, compared to about 312,000 cases pending at the beginning of the decade. Nearly 300,000 of these appeals are over 1 year old. Approximately 92,000 veterans have pending hearings. The President’s FY 2009 Budget Request projects that the hearings backlog will ease somewhat to 682,000 in FY 2009. The targeted processing time for a completed hearing in FY 2009 is 506 days, down only slightly from the targeted time of 535 days for FY 2008. This is still an increase of nearly 200 days over FY 2001. ...

Service delivery in Field Offices is deteriorating: ...

SSA has two classes of phone service: 800 Number and Field Office. The 800 Number had a busy rate of 7.5% in FY 2007 and handled about 59 million calls through agents and automation. At the same time over 60 million phone calls are directed to SSA Field Offices each year. In FY 2007, 45% of callers who eventually reached a Field Office by telephone said that they had received a busy signal or were told to call back at another time on an earlier call. Consequently, the actual busy rate is higher than 45%. ...

Staffing at SSA is close to its lowest level since 1972, before SSI was established; yet, SSA today has about twice the number of beneficiaries it had in 1972. According to SSA’s Budget Appendix for FY 2009, SSA’s civilian full-time staff employment for Fiscal Year 2009 will essentially remain unchanged, leaving it at this low level.

The Disability Determination Services (DDSs) have lost about 1,270 positions since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2006, as a result their staffing levels are down about 8.7%. The attrition rate in recent years at the DDSs has averaged 12.7 % versus 6.8% for Federal government employees. This has forced the DDSs to invest significant resources to train new staff. The DDSs will not be able to adequately address staffing losses either. ...

As of FY 2008, SSA has a backlog of 3,300 work years. This is expected to grow to 8,100 work years in FY 2009. Included in this shortfall are important workloads and services that are in addition to the processing of new applications, e.g., representative payee accounting, recording earnings, and dealing with overpayments. SSA also has a large backlog of unworked medical Continuing Disability Reviews and SSI Redeterminations due to the reductions in processing these workloads because of budget shortfalls. These unworked program integrity activities are costing taxpayers billions of dollars ...

The House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee recommended that an additional $100 million above the President’s FY 2009 Budget Request be provided for SSA’s administrative funding. The full Senate Appropriations Committee recommended that SSA receive an additional $50 million above the President’s FY 2009 Budget Request. It is unlikely that Congress will complete its work on the FY 2009 appropriations bills before the end of the year and a Continuing Resolution (CR) will be enacted to provide stopgap funding. A CR passed at FY 2008 levels would only cause SSA’s unacceptable level of service to degrade.

Waiting In Florida

Some excerpts from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

Heather Noble's heart is so weak the doctors tell her not to laugh too hard. She had a stroke during heart surgery, and now speaks with a slur and can't recall her baby's name. Her doctors say she can't work.

Two years later, the former UPS worker and mother of two from North Lauderdale has become destitute while waiting for Social Security to decide whether she qualifies for disability benefits. Noble, 41, is trapped in a growing backlog of 750,000 unresolved disability cases — about 8,100 in South Florida and 37,500 in the state. Some injured and ill people have become homeless or bankrupt while waiting for rulings. ...

Over two years, Social Security has resolved all 200,000 cases that are more than 900 days old. Officials hope to bring the backlog to a manageable 430,000 by 2013, said Frank Cristaudo, chief administrative law judge for the agency.

"It will take a while," Cristaudo said. "Things are getting a little better." ...

Nora Staum, a Coral Springs disability attorney, said one client was dropped from a local kidney transplant list because he had no income or medical coverage until Social Security declared him disabled. Another family that needed an oxygen machine but couldn't pay their electric bill came within a day of losing power.

"The system is failing people who need it the most," said Lyle Lieberman, a South Florida attorney and former president of the trade group National Organization of Social Security Claimants' Representatives.

Why is Judge Cristaudo saying things are getting better? He knows that is not true. The backlogs are getting worse. Maybe they are getting worse at a slower rate than the used to, but that does not mean that things are getting better. There is an election campaign going on. Pretending things are getting better when they are getting worse is the sort of thing one expects from a politician, but not from a civil servant.

Hurricane Forces Office Closures

The Social Security Administration has announced that the following offices will be closed today:

Louisiana:

Lake Charles

Texas:

Alice

Angleton

Beaumont

Brenham

Bryan

Conroe

Corpus Christi

Galveston

Houston Downtown

Houston Northeast

Houston Northwest

Houston Southeast

Houston Southwest

Lufkin

Pasadena

Port Arthur

Victoria

Update: the DeRider and Leesville, LA offices have been added to the list.

Witness List For House Social Security Subcommittee Hearing

The House Social Security Subcommittee has posted the following witness list for the hearing it will hold on September 16 on the "Performance of Social Security Administration Appeals Hearing Offices:"

• The Honorable Frank Cristaudo, Chief Administrative Law Judge, Social Security Administration
• The Honorable Patrick O’Carroll, Inspector General, Social Security Administration
• Ethel Zelenske, Co-Chair, Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Social Security Task Force
• Kathy Meinhardt, Principal Executive Officer for Federal Managers Association Chapter 275, Social Security Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, Federal Managers Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Sylvester J. Schieber, Chairman, Social Security Advisory Board
• The Honorable Ron Bernoski, President, Association of Administrative Law Judges, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• James Hill, President, Chapter 224, National Treasury Employees Union, Cleveland, Ohio

Social Security In The Aftermath Of the September 11, 2001 Attacks

From the November 1, 2001 testimony of Larry Massanari, then Acting Commissioner of Social Security, to the House Social Security Subcommittee:

In the aftermath of the attacks, SSA took immediate steps to ensure that we stayed open for business, for routine business as well as for those who lost family members or were injured that day. All Social Security offices in New York City and the Washington D.C. area were immediately closed on September 11 to protect both the public and our employees, while SSA assessed the severity of the situation and the need for increased security.

The next day, all Social Security offices and the national 800 number were open, with the exception of field offices in New York City, the Northeastern Program Service Center in Jamaica, and the hearing office and the Disability Determination Services (DDS) office in lower Manhattan. The New York Regional Office also remained closed, but we opened a command center in the Grand Central field office. All of our offices-except for those in lower Manhattan-reopened on September 13. We redeployed employees from the closed offices to offices that were open.

We immediately worked with the Treasury Department and the Postal Service to make sure that, where normal processes remained in place, benefit checks and electronic funds transfer payments continued to be sent. Where service was disrupted, we tried to find ways to mitigate delays. ...

By September 24, all of our offices were open, with the exception of the Manhattan DDS, which had been located near the World Trade Center. Some of the DDS staff is being temporarily housed in the Northeastern Program Service Center in Jamaica. Others have been sent to work in other offices.

All 15,000 claims that had been pending in the DDS were removed from the building and sent to a contractor for cleaning and decontamination. All cases have been cleaned and sent back to the DDS. The DDS personnel are in the process of recontacting claimants to update the medical evidence and explain the delay in processing.

Massanari hardly touched upon what may have been the most heroic thing that Social Security employees did after the September 11, 2001 attacks. They continued to open huge quantities of mail, despite a very real anthrax threat. I do not believe the Social Security employees who opened that mail have ever gotten the recognition they deserve.

Appropriations Situation

I hate to yank your chain, but this is from The Hill:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) cautioned Republicans Monday against forcing a government shutdown over expanded oil drilling ...

With no appropriations bills signed by President Bush, lawmakers’ chief task this month is to pass a stopgap measure to fund the federal government in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

Republicans are mulling whether to press the offshore oil drilling fight by blocking the funding resolution, which contains the congressional moratorium on such drilling.

Reid reminded the GOP that its government shutdown led by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) during the Clinton administration was met with widespread public disapproval.