Not Good News For Those Who Love Telework

 

    From WISH-TV:

A former Social Security Administration employee has been charged with one count of wire fraud after officials say he defrauded the organization for over three years. …

According to court documents, Christopher Markham, 40, had been employed by the administration and assigned to an office in Anderson. 

Between February 2019, and June 2022, documents say Markham “made it appear” he was teleworking his full-time job for the SSA during regular workdays. But instead, he was working as a home inspector for his own company, Markham Inspection Services. 

Markham continued to collect his full federal salary and benefits from the SSA at the time, attorneys said.

The release says Markham “routinely” performed home inspections, making it appear as though he was teleworking while working for the SSA, while hiding that he was not performing administrative work by allowing his wife and mother access to his Social Security Administration computer to send emails. …

Creamy Or Crunchy?

     From Nextgov/FCW:

...The longer arc of this agency is a phenomenally dedicated, committed, compassionate culture. [SSA staff has] been traumatized by the increased volume and nine years of steady staff reductions, given the lack of any Congressional attention to our budget or even the decency of our own appropriations hearings, said [Social Security Commissioner Martin] O'Malley” ...

The SSI program “purports to be a program of last resort,” but “forces the poorest of people to jump through hoops, stand on their head and gargle peanut butter in order to qualify for it,” he told lawmakers at a recent hearing. ...

For The Frustrated Social Security Disability Claimant

    My firm is starting a new blog directed at Social Security disability claimants, rather than Social Security professionals. It's called For The Frustrated Social Security Disability Claimant. We're just getting started but you can look in now.

Detecting Overpayments Due To Marriage

     From Impact of Undetected Marriages on Social Security Administration Payments, a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General:

... Marriage can impact a Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) beneficiary’s payment. We randomly selected 1 of 20 segments from the Supplemental Security Record (SSR) and Master Beneficiary Record (MBR). We identified 3 populations with name changes and sampled 250 individuals ...

SSA did not always take the necessary manual actions to properly update 38 of the 250 payment records for SSI recipients or OASDI beneficiaries when there was a name change because of marriage. Furthermore, SSA had not taken manual action on 11 SSI recipients or OASDI beneficiaries who changed their name via the iSSNRC application. We estimate SSA improperly paid 16,631 SSI recipients and OASDI beneficiaries approximately $240.9 million when there was a name change because of marriage. ...

When a person changes their name, SSA systems do not automatically determine whether they are receiving benefits. SSA does not know about a marriage until an individual reports it. ...

SSA explored the feasibility of using electronic marriage data to determine if OASDI beneficiaries changed their marital status. However, not all states/jurisdictions have a central repository of electronic marriage data, and many do not require, or collect, the marriage applicants’ Social Security number. ...

    There's a lot that Social Security could do to prevent overpayments if it had an adequate workforce. A different Inspector General might want to issue a report detailing how much money is being wasted due to inadequate staffing at the Social Security Administration.

    By the way, there's also the question of whether marriage should have as many effects as it does on Social Security and SSI benefits but that's another topic.

It's Taking Longer And Longer To Get Through To Social Security On The Phone

     From an article in the Daily Mail:

Closure Of Field Office Due To Staffing And Attrition Problems

     The union local that represents most Social Security employees is reporting that because of staffing and attrition issues Social Security is closing a field office in Southeast Cleveland that serves an area that is 94% black.

Interview With Commissioner

     Social Security has released a recording of an interview of Martin O'Malley, Commissioner of Social Security, by Jeffrey Buckner, Social Security's Assistant Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Communications. You can listen to the audio or read a transcript. Here's a little snippet: "The common sense is, you are not going to have satisfied customers if you have miserable and overworked employees."

Congressional Hearing On GPO/WEP

     The House Social Security Subcommittee held a hearing on Tuesday on the Government Pension Offset/Windfall Elimination Provision in the Social Security Act that deal with cases in which a person is eligible for both Social Security benefits and a pension based upon earnings not covered by FICA. Two of the four witnesses called for modification of the formulas used to determine the offset and another called for its elimination. As things stand now, it's highly unlikely that anything will be done about this.

New SSI Regs

     From a notice that Social Security will publish in the Federal Register tomorrow:

We are finalizing our proposed rule to expand the definition of a public assistance (PA) household for purposes of our programs, particularly the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, to include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as an additional means-tested public income-maintenance (PIM) program. We are also revising the definition of a PA household from a household in which every member receives some kind of PIM payment to a household that has both an SSI applicant or recipient, and at least one other household member who receives one or more of the listed PIM payments (the any other definition). If determined to be living in a PA household, inside in-kind support and maintenance (ISM) would no longer need to be developed. The final rule will decrease the number of SSI applicants and recipients charged with ISM from others within their household. In addition, we expect this rule to decrease the amount of income we would deem to SSI applicants and recipients because we will no longer deem as income from ineligible spouses and parents who live in the same household: the value of the SNAP benefits that they receive; any income that was counted or excluded in figuring the amount of that payment; or any income that was used to determine the amount of SNAP benefits to someone else. These policy changes reduce administrative burden for low-income households and SSA. ...

PRW To Go Down From 15 Years To 5 On June 8

     From a notice that Social Security will publish in the Federal Register tomorrow:

We are finalizing our proposed regulation to revise the time period that we consider when determining whether an individual’s past work is relevant for the purposes of making disability determinations and decisions. We are revising the definition of past relevant work (PRW) by reducing the relevant work period from 15 to 5 years. Additionally, we will not consider past work that started and stopped in fewer than 30 calendar days to be PRW. ...

DATES: This final rule will be effective on June 8, 2024.

Perfect Timing?

    Wouldn't now be the time to end the reconsideration step in Social Security disability determination? Over the years the objection to doing that has been that that it would throw too many cases to the hearing level but at the moment the backlogs are enormous at the initial and reconsideration steps and quite low at OHO. Doing it now would kill two birds with one stone. You'd dramatically reduce the backlogs at DDS and you'd give OHO something to do at a time when they're rapidly running out of work. It would create the "drinking from a fire hose" problem at OHO but I'd rather see that than have OHO lacking work while DDS struggles. 

    By the way, I have a vested interest in seeing this come to pass since I have a vested interest in seeing Social Security disability claims resolved expeditiously. Is that a bad thing?

 

Help For SSI Recipients

    The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved final rules to add Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits (SNAP or Food Stamps) to the definition of means-tested assistance programs for the purposes of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) computation. This will help reduce Social Security workloads and it will increase benefits for many SSI recipients. Expect to see this in the Federal Register soon.

SSNs To Disappear From Government Correspondence

      From Government Executive: 

 Office of Personnel Management issued a final rule Friday that would cull Social Security numbers any mailed document in an effort to prevent fraud.

The rule, which was published in the Federal Register, is part of the implementation of the 2017 Social Security Number Fraud Prevention Act and is designed to help protect the identifiers, which can be used in various forms of identity theft.  …

O'Malley Trashed

     Mark Warshawsky, of the right wing American Enterprise Institute, has written an op ed for the Baltimore Sun trashing Social Security's Commissioner, Martin O'Malley. Warshawsky blames O'Malley for asking for greater operating funds for Social Security. He says that the increasing number of people drawing Social Security benefits is large irrelevant to the agency's workload since it is mostly retirees who put little burden on the system. He says that the agency's real problem with getting its workload done is employees working from home and Social Security adding a new step in the process of disability review in 2019 and 2020. I don't know what new step he's talking about here. Of course, there's also the problem that in 2019 and 2020 O'Malley wasn't the Commissioner and Biden wasn't the President. Warshawsky goes on criticize what O'Malley is doing about overpayments and O'Malley's failure to adopt new regulations drafted while Republicans were in office to deny far more disability claimants. By the way, Republicans could have adopted those regulations but were no more eager than O'Malley to do so and for good reason. They're not justified by the data not to mention that all hell would break loose if they were adopted.

    By the way, not to knock the Baltimore Sun, which is a fine newspaper, but I'm betting that the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal passed on this piece before the Sun finally agreed to publish it.

Backlog Improvement At OHO

    Dispositions continue to outpace receipts at Social Security's Office of Hearings Operations (OHO), i.e.,  it's taking less time to get a hearing on a disability claim. The biggest reason is that cases are hung up at lower levels of review where backlogs are burgeoning. One day that dam will burst and OHO will be inundated.

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New ISM Rules

     The Social Security Administration will be publishing final rules tomorrow which provide:

... that a “business arrangement” exists, such that the SSI applicant or recipient is not considered to be receiving ISM [In Kind Support and Maintenance] in the form of room or rent, when the amount of monthly required rent for the property equals or exceeds the presumed maximum value (PMV).

    This sounds awfully tedious, and it is, but the estimate of Social Security's Chief Actuary is that it will increase SSI payments to about 41,000 people by an average of $132 a month.

    The new regulations will not go into effect until September 30, 2024.

    Unfortunately, there is nothing in these new regulations to help those who have an agreement to pay for their room and board once they get some income, that is, a loan of room and board. There are a lot of people in this situation and Social Security is treating them harshly.

Past Relevant Work Regs Advance

     The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved final regulations on Intermediate Improvement to the Disability Adjudication Process, Including How we Consider Past Work. When published as a proposal these included a reduction in the time period for considering past relevant work from 15 years to 5. Expect to see the regulations in the Federal Register soon. 

    I hope the effective date isn't six months into the future.

Controversy Over Benefits For Children In Foster Care

     CBS News is reporting on the issue of what happens to Social Security dependent benefits for children who end up in foster care. In most cases, the state applies for and receives the dependent benefits. The child receives nothing. The child usually doesn't know this is happening or has happened. The theory is that the states need this money to pay for foster care. The contra argument is that the foster care is often terrible and it's not the state's money to begin with. This controversy has been around forever.

    I note the contrast with SSI child's benefits where a child's parent or guardian must establish a separate bank account to receive the benefits for a child and must show how the money was spent. Not so with Title II dependent benefits. The state just gobbles up the money.

    Social Security's new Commissioner, Martin O'Malley, is quoted in the piece as opposing what's going on. However, he has no authority that I can think of to do anything about this.

Former SSA Employee Sentenced For Fraud

      From the Times Leader of Scranton, Pennsylvania:

A former employee with Social Security Administration was sentenced to three years in federal prison for pandemic relief fraud.

U.S. District Court Judge Malachy E. Mannion sentenced Takiyah Gordon Austin, 47, formerly of Wilkes-Barre, to three years in federal prison and three years of supervised release on charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, according to U.S. Attorney Gerard M. Karam.

Austin was also ordered to pay $288,590 in restitution.

Austin, as a claims specialist, filed Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims for ineligible recipients in exchange for payment from the individuals, according to a news release. …

Why Is SSA Still Relying On Ancient Occupational Data?

     David Weaver asks why Social Security doesn't do something about its reliance upon the ancient Dictionary of Occupational Titles in making disability determinations. Everyone agrees it's unreliable. People are being approved and denied based upon data collected more than 40 years ago. Why? My guess is that all of us are afraid of what comes next if we drop the DOT.