Does Move To Decertify Immigration Judges’ Union Have Implications For Social Security ALJs?

     From the New York Times:

The Justice Department has moved to decertify the union of immigration judges, a maneuver that could muffle an organization whose members have sometimes been openly critical of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda. 

The department filed a petition on Friday asking the Federal Labor Relations Authority to determine whether the union, the National Association of Immigration Judges, should have its certification revoked because its members are considered “management officials” ineligible to collectively organize, according to a Justice Department spokesman. ...

     Could you make the same argument regarding Social Security Administrative Law Judges? In the past, Social Security has tried hard to take away anything that looks like ALJ management responsibilities, at least in traditional hearing offices, but what management responsibilities do Immigration Judges have?

Errors On Social Security Statements

     From the Detroit Free Press:

... In an odd quirk, Social Security finally acknowledged in early August that a glitch caused the agency to send out some incorrect "On Request" paper statements. The troubled reports were triggered if you asked for information on your Social Security account via a paper form, known as an SSA-7004. 

"Of the tens of thousands of paper requests the agency receives annually, less than 1% of those statements issued contained errors," according to an email from Mark Hinkle, acting press officer in the national Social Security office. ...

Social Security said a coding issue caused errors on a very small number of the "On Request" statements that were issued since 2017. Hinkle said the statements displayed the correct estimated benefit amounts but the mistakes were made when the projected benefits were applied to incorrect ages at which the person would receive them.  ...

Jumpy In Lubbock

      From KCBD:

Officials with the Lubbock Police Department say a huge misunderstanding caused the evacuation of the Social Security office in Lubbock today.

According to police, a person parked a vehicle in the employee parking lot of the building and ran off quickly. The call came in just after 11:30 a.m.

Homeland Security officers told KCBD the vehicle had out-of-state plates and it concerned an employee when the person ran off.

Officers responded and brought in a K-9 dog used to detect explosives.

During the investigation, they learned a person was late for a job interview. The person parked quickly and ran to their interview.

The building was evacuated for about an hour.

Social Security Hiring Freeze: Lazy And Stupid And Insulting

     From Federal News Network:

The Social Security Administration has implemented a hiring freeze across much of the agency’s headquarters. 

SSA Commissioner Andrew Saul announced the hiring freeze, effective July 31, in a memo to senior staff, which Federal News Network obtained. 

An SSA spokesman confirmed the hiring freeze and said it was implemented to ensure agency resources are directly focused on customer service priorities. 

“This freeze applies to all headquarters components and their respective regional offices,” the spokesman said. “Direct public service and workload positions and workload positions in the teleservice centers, processing centers, area and local field offices and state disability determination services are exempt from the hiring freeze.” ... 

SSA headquarters and component offices impacted by the hiring freeze can’t establish new positions or post new external or internal vacancy announcements, according to the agency guidance. 

New appointments for administrative law judges, senior administrative law judges and administrative appeals judges are also prohibited. ... 

In addition, the hiring freeze blocks permanent and temporary promotions for SSA employees, with the exception of career ladder promotions, according to Saul’s memo. ...

     I regard hiring freezes as lazy and stupid and inherently demeaning to civil servants. Even with as many exceptions as this one, hiring freezes inevitably cause dislocations because the vast majority of federal employees do important work for the American people. As these hiring freezes go on exceptions keep getting more and more extensive as it becomes more and more obvious that the work can’t get done without replacing  departing employees. The problems get worse and worse until the hiring freeze is quietly lifted. No significantly money is ever saved. If you really think there are vacancies that shouldn’t be filled, go to the trouble of specifying them. Don’t casually insult federal employees by implying that there is some advantage to the American people in failing to fill vacancies that occur randomly across a large agency.

Not Just Retirement

From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Former Social Security Employee Sentenced To 12 Months Behind Bars

     From WSOC-TV in Charlotte:

Oliver Montgomery has already served more than four months behind bars, but on Tuesday a federal judge ruled that he’ll spend eight more months in prison.

Montgomery is a former Social Security representative in Charlotte who abused his power. He was sentenced Tuesday for a crime that victimized at least two people, including an inmate.

From January 2017 to July 2017, Montgomery meddled with their accounts.

Last year, Channel 9 reported that Montgomery changed information on an inmate's paperwork in order to divert $27,000 to himself instead of to a beneficiary.

In another case, Montgomery used a beneficiary's personal identity information. That time he took more than $12,000, officials said. ...

Can We Just Quit Wasting Money On Such UnPROMISING Research?

     The Social Security Administration, along with the Departments of Education, Labor and Health and Human Services have worked together to create a plan to help young people receiving Supplemental Security Income improve their lives and, more to the point, move off government benefits. This plan, called PROMISE for Promoting Readiness of Minors in SSI, was tested in six states. PROMISE has the following components:

• Formal partnerships between state agencies that provide the following services: vocational rehabilitation (VR) services, special education and related services, workforce development services, Medicaid services, income assistance from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and services provided by federally funded state developmental disability and mental health services programs
• Case management to ensure that PROMISE services would be appropriately planned and coordinated, help participants navigate the broader service delivery system, and help with transition planning for post-school goals and services
• Benefits counseling and financial education for youth and their families on SSA work incentives, eligibility requirements of various programs, rules governing earnings and assets, and topics promoting families’ financial stability
• Career and work-based learning experiences, including paid and unpaid work experiences in an integrated setting while they were in high school
• Parent training and information in two areas: (1) the parents’ or guardians’ role in supporting and advocating for their youth to help them achieve their education and employment goals, and (2) resources for improving the education and employment outcomes of the parents or guardians and the economic self-sufficiency. ...

     Our old friend, the beltway bandit, Mathematica Policy Research, has done an evaluation of PROMISE. The bottom line is that PROMISE is quite unpromising. As the report says, "By 18 months after enrollment, none of the programs had a desirable impact on youth’s self-determination and expectations or youth’s reliance on Medicaid, nor on parents’ total income." 

     This sort of research is not harmless. This study cost $230 million. That money could have been better spent preventing further degradation of service at Social Security. 

     Can we just give up on the illusion that there's some crafty scheme that will put disabled people to work? We've tried these schemes for more than 50 years, often at great expense, and they never work. Never.

Representation At Hearing Level Continues To Decline

     Below are reports on representation at the initial, reconsideration and hearing levels over the time period 2008-18. These were obtained by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) and published in its newsletter, which is not available online to non-members. 

     Note that Social Security is careful to say that their systems were not set up to capture this information at the initial and reconsideration levels, requiring them to rely upon "proxies." The numbers at the hearing level were captured from a system that was set up to capture this information. I regard the initial and reconsideration numbers as suspect. I doubt that there were increases in initial and reconsideration representation over this ten year period to this extent, particularly the increase indicated at the initial level.
     The more reliable numbers at the hearing level show what I expected, a decrease, largely related to the failure to increase the cap on fees that may be charged Social Security claimants. Social Security claimants are being so well protected against greedy attorneys that many of them cannot find an attorney to represent them, especially if they have an SSI claim.

     Click on the images to view full size.

Why Education Matters

https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/chart-book-social-security-disability-insurance

Pushback Against Social Security 2100 Act

     Predictably, Republicans are pushing back against the Social Security 2100 Act which would secure Social Security financing for at least the rest of the century as well as increase benefits. The bill, of course, would also raise taxes.

     As I've said before, let's see the Republican bill.