Blind Man Has Trouble With Social Security

From WSPA in Greenville, SC:

When I first met 61-year-old James Beck it was easy to tell just how difficult it was for him to get around.
“I have to ask somebody whether it’s daylight or dark,“ Beck said.

Beck is legally blind and he says he has the paperwork from his doctors to prove it.

“It’s bad just living in the dark all the time you miss so many things, the sunset and the sunrise and all and you can’t see television but I enjoy listening to it,“ said Beck.

The Social Security Administration says he can work denying him disability benefits for more than two years.

“That man at Social Security said blind people works,“ said Beck. “Well I haven’t been able to find a job.“ ...

SSA’s spokesperson, Patti Patterson, talked with us by phone from Atlanta. She told us a senior attorney denied Beck’s claim in January but a judge approved it after we called, without any new evidence.

Lots Of Hiring? Committed To Talking With The Union?

From the Federal Times:

Social Security Administration Commissioner Michael Astrue is overseeing one of the largest federal hiring efforts currently under way. He wants to bring in about 6,500 new employees by fall to reduce claims backlogs and address other needs. In an interview with Federal Times last week, he emphasized the importance of diversity in hiring and the challenges of training a workforce with so many new employees. ...

Following are excerpts of the interview:

Q: Both the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the fiscal 2009 appropriations gave SSA significant allocations for hiring. What advances are you making in hiring?

Astrue: We’ve hired as of [May 26], since the first week in March, about 3,700 people. So we have almost another 3,000 to try to hire between now and the end of September. If we get Congress passing the president’s budget on a timely basis, we’ll continue hiring. We should be up over about 68,000 employees at that point. We’ve dipped as low as about 60,000 in the past. So this makes a big difference, particularly in our ability to serve the public.

Q: What about administrative law judges to adjudicate decisions on the nearly three-quarters of a million in disability claims backlogged?

Astrue: We are, this week, hiring 157 new administrative law judges, and the budget for next year calls for hiring another 208. We lose about 60 to 65 a year. [Currently, 1,150 are on board.] That means we’re also opening up a lot of new hearing offices; so we have 17 new hearing offices [for a total of 157] ... and two new national hearing centers [for a total of four]....

Q: How have you approached working with the unions?

Astrue: You try to talk directly, develop relationships. Sometimes that’s worked well; sometimes that worked well for a while, and then did not work very well … In general, if you commit yourself and this is true on both sides of the table, to talking regularly, candidly and professionally, people find common ground. There’ve been some instances where, once we’ve talked about things or where things were raised for us, they’ve expected to have opposition, and we weren’t opposed. But if you don’t talk on a regular basis, you miss some of those opportunities.

Personally Identifiable Info On Lexis/Nexis?

This is the entire report released by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

Quick Response Evaluation: Access to Personally Identifiable Information Available in the LexisNexis Total Research System (Limited Distribution) (A-07-09-19059)

Our objective was to determine whether the Social Security Administration's policies and procedures safeguard personally identifiable information (PII) in LexisNexis from improper use by Agency employees.

Our review found that SSA needs to establish policies and procedures to adequately safeguard PII available in LexisNexis applications from improper use by its employees. SSA also needs to establish the related instructions for restricting this access.

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

Delays In Minnesota

From the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

Don Gunnon was the breadwinner until his back gave out. Then he found himself in the bread line. ...

For decades, Don ... paid taxes — to the federal government, the state, the county, the city. They never had a reason to take advantage of the safety net they helped fund. ...

Don's taxes included coverage for Social Security Disability Insurance, and now he was disabled. ..

Like 60 percent of Minnesotans who applied, Don was denied on his first application. He asked for a reconsideration — a request to have a different pair of eyes look at the application. He was denied again. The next step was to file a request for a hearing before an administrative law judge. That's when he discovered he was caught in a backlog of scandalous proportions: In 2007, about 746,000 claims were pending at the hearing level, 9,000 of them in Minnesota. Some cases had been on the back burner for three years.

For those all-important hearings, it's best to hire a lawyer, but Don, who was broke, could ask only for free help through Hennepin County. Don said his representative, who wasn't a lawyer and whom he met only a few days earlier, kept shushing him when he tried to object to incorrect information. Six years after he started the process, he was denied disability insurance payments for the third time.

Some Emergency Messages

Last year I made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Social Security Administration for all the recent Emergency Messages that the agency has been withholding from public view on the grounds that they are too "sensitive" to be released. I have finally received a partial response to my request. 121 pages of records were released to me. Another 68 pages are still being withheld.

I am of the opinion that as a result of a recent order from President Obama and a recent Memorandum from the Attorney General that the agency has no basis for withholding these records from me. I have filed an appeal.

I am not going to try to post the entire 121 pages I have received. Most are truly trivial. If you want them, please let me know and I can e-mail the whole thing to you.

I have posted five of the more interesting ones on the separate Social Security Perspectives blog.

• EM-07084 contains instructions for implementing "Informal Remands", also known as "re-recons." Because of its length and Blogger's limitations, this is broken up into Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. I think that any reasonable person familiar with the subject will agree that this should have been released to the public. As an attorney who represents Social Security claimants I should have had access to this. Ironically, the "Informal Remands" are now about to end just as we finally find out how they are being implemented.
  
• EM-08081 shows that several large Long Term Disability (LTD) companies have entered into an agreement to provide the Social Security Administration with medical records on their insureds.
• EM-08087 shows how the Social Security Administration is administering the HEART Act which provides for special treatment of certain veterans annuities, special pay and allowances to military service members and AmeriCorps payments. It is clearly a policy document that should have been released to the public.
• EM-08093 is a great example of the absurdity of Social Security's treatment of these Emergency Messages. This "sensitive" document shows how Social Security was working with the Postal Service and the Department of the Treasury to move up the delivery date of checks in advance of Hurricane Ike in September 2008. I have no idea why Social Security would want to keep this secret. The absurdity did not end in 2008. Take a look at the document. Social Security has redacted the portion of the document showing the zip codes affected. The only explanation is "Ex. 2." This refers to the Exception 2 in the FOIA which allows agencies to withhold materials "related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency." I do not think those who received their checks early thought that this matter related only to the agency. Even if one can imagine a twisted justification under FOIA for this redaction, what is the point? The recent order from President Obama specifically directs agencies that their should be a "clear presumption" for release of records. The Attorney General's memorandum warns agencies that the Department of Justice will defend FOIA cases only if some interest protected by the FOIA would be harmed by the disclosure. What is there to even think about here?
  
• EM-08105, which is broken down into Part 1 and Part 2 due to its length, contains information about how Social Security is interpreting and applying the SSI Extension for Elderly and Disabled Refugees Act. It seems obvious to me that this policy material should be freely available to the public.
  

Turnaround In Galveston

From The Daily News of Galveston County:

Eight months after leaving, the U.S. Social Security Administration will return to the island, easing fears that the services upon which many residents depend would remain on the mainland.

The administration will open its office, 4918 Seawall Blvd., at 9 a.m. Monday.

Although its island offices sustained minimal damage from Hurricane Ike, administration officials blamed the Sept. 13 storm for its decision in October to leave and lease office space at 2700 Marina Bay Drive in League City.

The return comes after much controversy about the administration’s long-term real estate strategies.

In April last year, the administration generated public outcry when it said it would make a permanent move to League City.

The decision angered island residents who worried the elderly and disabled would have trouble traveling to League City, which doesn’t have public transportation.

Although the administration secured an 18-month lease in League City, terms of the deal allowed it to terminate the agreement in six months, officials said.

Island resident Margaret Canavan collected 1,600 signatures on petitions opposing the move.

In July, administration officials agreed to halt the plans.

The administration, which complained about high rents on the island, has not abandoned its search for new office space, spokesman Wes Davis said.

Same-Sex Partners And Social Security

Because of the Defense of Marriage Act there is virtually nothing that the Social Security Administration can do to give recognition to same-sex partners for purposes of benefits payments. However, the Department of State has just given recognition to the same-sex partnerships of its employees, especially for purposes of the diplomatic service. There are vast differences between the Department of State and Social Security, but are there some things that Social Security could and should do for its employees who are in same-sex partnerships? What do you think?

Roundtable On Backlogs

From Government Executive:

The economic downturn, inadequate funding and red tape are at the core of an increasing backlog of Social Security disability cases, panelists said during a roundtable discussion in Washington on Thursday.

The government has tried for years to reduce the number of cases awaiting review from administrative law judges, but the recession is a significant setback, said Alan Cohen, senior budget adviser for the Senate Finance Committee.

"Initial claims are going to skyrocket in 2010," he said during the forum, organized by the Association of Administration Law Judges. "The tsunami hasn't hit the administrative law judges here." ...

"You just need the money to properly administer the program," said Kathryn Olson, staff director for the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security. "Too much pressure to crank out cases really does undermine the integrity of the process." ...

Some panelists said SSA's plan to reduce the backlog by 2013 was forcing judges to take on too many cases.

"I am truly stunned by the suggestion that administrative law judges should review 500 to 700 cases per year," said U.S. Magistrate Judge Jillyn Schulze, referring to an expectation set by Chief Administrative Judge Frank A. Cristaudo in a 2008 letter to administrative law judges. "That is truly unconscionable."