Robert Nickerson Added To Obama Transition Team For Social Security

President-elect Barack Obama's transition website now lists Robert Nickerson as part of the transition team for Social Security. Nickerson was a Special Assistant to the Commissioner of Social Security in 1996 and a Confidential Assistant to the Commissioner (what a title!) in 2000. I can find no sign of what he has been up to since 2000.

Barnhart Now Teaching At Harvard

I am starting a "where are they now?" series on former high Social Security officials. I am not suggesting any of these folks for new jobs at Social Security.

Jo Anne Barnhart, who was Commissioner of Social Security from 2001 to 2007, is now an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She has an office and a Harvard e-mail address, so this must not be just an occasional thing.

NCSSMA Meets With DCO And Commissioner

The Annual Meeting of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, included some high level meetings. Here are some excerpts from the minutes of a meeting with Linda McMahon, Social Security's Deputy Commissioner, Operations (DCO) in late October:

Although there were very high hopes that we would get $50 million above the President’s budget, Linda believes we will be extremely lucky to get the President’s budget, and we could be in a yearlong Continuing Resolution (CR). [It sounds like she had trouble believing that Barack Obama would be elected President. Notice below that Commissioner Astrue was quite a bit more optimistic.] Any new President will walk into a budget deficit, but the Agency will continue to make its case. Overtime has already been allocated for the first quarter of this fiscal year, split evenly between FOs [Field Offices] and the PCs [Program Centers].

Linda reiterated that during the CR, Operations would only be allowed to hire 1 individual for every 3 losses. They are waiting until December to see where losses occur. The first priority is the 800 number. There will be limited field hires for critical situations. We were able to do some advance hiring for 2009 in 2008.

The Commissioner ... is interested in providing resources to ODAR [Office of Disability Adjudication and Review] who in the past received less attention in terms of hiring, systems, etc. Congress is focused on the challenges faced by ODAR and is sensitive to decreasing the backlogs. If the problems ODAR faces are not fixed, then credibility for the entire Agency is lost. Another challenge is a shifting of workloads as hearings are moved from ODAR to Operations to effectuate them.

Commissioner Astrue also met with the group. Here are some excerpts from that meeting:

In FY 2008, due to attrition and experienced ALJs being used to train the new judges, the Agency actually had about 46 fewer Administrative Law Judges (ALJs). The best ALJs were taken offline to help not only with training the new ALJs but also with the hiring process. ...

Despite all the distractions of hiring and training, we were able to improve productivity because of the commitment of employees. We have locked ourselves into ODAR facility decisions that were more suitable years ago. There are parts of the country that have lighter workloads and parts that are heavier. In particular, in the Atlanta and Chicago regions, the number of facilities is less than adequate.

Under the Continuing Resolution, there is a 1 for 3 replacement hiring rate in the field offices, and 1 for 2 in the DDSs because turnover rates are higher and salaries are lower. The replacement hiring rate in ODAR will be 1 for 1. The new Agency Strategic Plan sets some extremely tough goals for them. ODAR gets the lion’s share of the credit for reducing disability workloads. ...

He feels there is a reasonable chance of exceeding the President’s budget in FY 2009. In the past when Congress has not fully funded the Agency, performance has deteriorated. ...

The Commissioner indicated it took him 11 months to realize there was no focal point to improve notices, to ensure they were up to date, and to prevent them from adding to the workload burdens. He looked at some ODAR notices which were terrible, so he personally made recommendations for rewriting these.

Newspaper Article Helps Another Claimant

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is reporting that David Hintz, whose case was featured in a story in August on Social Security backlogs, has been approved for Social Security disability benefits. He had a hearing scheduled within a month after the article in the paper.

Hearing On Compassionate Allowances For Brain Damage

Commissioner Astrue held a public hearing today on his compassionate allowance scheme. This hearing concerned traumatic brain injuries and strokes and featured speakers from the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health.

Traditionally, Social Security has been anything but compassionate or quick in making disability determinations in brain damage cases. Social Security's standard practice is to delay decisions in these cases for months and months in hope of improvement and then to be oblivious to anything other than the most obvious effects of brain damage. Frontal lobe damage, which has its effects primarily upon personality, is completely ignored in most cases. State of the art neuropsychological testing is treated as unimportant.

Peter Orszag To Head OMB

Alexis Simendinger at the National Journal's Lost in Transition Blog is reporting that President-elect Obama has chosen Peter Orszag to be his Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). OMB has considerable power over the Social Security Administration, and not just through its power over the budget. No regulations get published the Federal Register without OMB approval. Orszag was once an economic adviser in the Clinton White House and has more recently been the director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Orszag co-authored a book calling for raising the retirement age for Social Security benefits, increasing the Social Security wagebase and reducing Social Security benefits for high wage earners.

Federal Court Vacancies

There are 12 vacancies on the Courts of Appeals and 25 at the District Court level. There are four vacancies on the 15 member Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals alone. One of the vacancies on the Fourth Circuit dates back to 1994! There will be many more vacancies over the next four years. Politics aside, the federal courts need more judges right now.

Barack Obama's appointments to the federal bench will have a significant impact, with Social Security being one of the ways they will have an impact. Their impact may be particularly important when it comes to class actions.

Something Fishy About These Numbers

Click on each of the thumbnails to see a November 5, 2008 report that the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) obtained from the Social Security Administration on backlogs of claimants awaiting hearings on their Social Security disability claims at each of the hearing offices, each of Social Security's regions and nationally.

Compare the state of the national backlog over time:

• January 25, 2007 -- 508 days
• May 25, 2007 -- 523 days
• July 28, 2007 -- 528 days
• August 31, 2007 -- 523 days
• November 30, 2007 -- 500 days
• February 29, 2008 -- 511 days
• May 30, 2008 -- 523 days
• June 27, 2008 -- 529 days
• July 31, 2008 -- 530 days
  
• September 3, 2008 -- 532 days
• November 5, 2008 -- 476
  

Does this improvement seem too good to be true? How could there be a 56 day reduction over the course of just 63 days? Is it possible that there has been some fiddling with the method by which these numbers are generated? Just looking at the numbers for the office I am most familiar with, Raleigh, I see a reduction in processing time from 509 days to 497 days yet there has been no surge in productivity locally that I have noticed. If anything, my impression is that things continue to slowly get worse here. I hope this report is true, but this needs an explanation.