The SAA [Staff Attorney Adjudicator] Program [also known as Senior Attorney program] has contributed to both an increase in adjudicative capacity and improved average processing time. However, the number of SAA OTRs[On The Records] peaked in FY [Fiscal Year] 2010, and the decline continued through the first 5 months of FY 2013. Overall, SAA and ALJ [Administrative Law Judge] OTRs have been decreasing since FY 2008, consistent with ODAR management’s predictions. In addition, in an FY 2012 quality review, the Office of Quality Performance noticed a significant drop in its decisional agreement rate on SAA OTRs, though the Agency did not have sufficient data to determine whether the issue was specific to SAAs or more broadly related to OTRs. Finally, hearing office managers were interested in additional training and greater duties for their SAAs. Given the expected decline in SAA OTRs, which was the primary purpose of the SAA Program, SSA should decide before any future extension of the program, or expansion of the SAA corps, whether the program needs to be modified to address future hearing office workload needs. ...
The SAA Program has contributed to hearing office productivity and timeliness since its introduction in FY 2008, though SAA OTR decisions peaked in FY 2010. SAA OTR decisions decreased by 31 percent in FY 2012 and continued dropping through the first 5 months of FY 2013. OTR decisions as a percent of total dispositions, whether decided by SAAs or ALJs, also decreased over the same 5-year period, from about 17 percent in FY 2008 to about 10 percent in FY 2012. An OQP [Office of Quality Performance] quality review of FY 2012 SAA OTR decisions found a significant decrease in the decisional agreement rate from prior years. However, the Agency has not conducted similar quality reviews focused on ALJ OTR decisions, so we could not determine whether the quality issues related to SAAs specifically or OTRs in general. ...
Social Security has employed non-ALJ attorneys for decades. They have assisted ALJs, mostly by writing decisions for them. One of their other duties has been to look for cases in which it would be appropriate to do an OTR. OTRs help get favorable decisions out more quickly to the most severely disabled people. The non-ALJ attorney would advise an ALJ that a particular case was appropriate for an OTR and, usually, but not always, the ALJ would agree and the favorable decision would be issued with the ALJ's signature. Social Security decided it would be best to eliminate the middleman -- the ALJ -- and let the attorneys, referred to as Senior Attorneys or SAAs issue the OTRs on their own authority, thereby saving the time that the ALJs had spent reviewing cases identified for possible OTR. ALJs as a group have always objected to SAAs issuing decisions in their own right. Whatever anyone thinks of the SAA program, there's no doubt that the SAA program helped work down the terrible hearing backlogs. Those backlogs are less terrible now but we're certainly not at backlog levels that anyone should be comfortable with.
Why did SAA decisions decrease after 2010? The 2010 election results are the obvious underlying reason but exactly why the change occurred may be a more difficult question. Was it a desire to somehow placate the new Republican majority in the House by approving fewer claims? Was it that then-Commissioner Astrue only used SAA because of pressure from the prior Democratic majority in the House and felt free to wind down the SAA program after Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives? Was it because reduced staffing forced the attorneys to stick to writing decisions for cases ALJs had heard instead of reviewing cases as SAAs? Was it simply because the backlog had come down enough that then-Commissioner Astrue thought that the SAA expedient could be phased out?
I have no idea why OQP found a decrease in decisional agreement. Since there is no gold standard against which to measure SAA or ALJ decisions, I regard any report that OQP produces on decisional quality to be worthless. In any case, I'm confident in saying that there was no real change in SAA decisions. The change was at OQP.
The most interesting question to me is why ALJ OTRs decreased. I can't explain it but I've certainly seen greatly increased ALJ reluctance to issue OTRs in the last three years or so. It's not unusual for me to have a hearing where the ALJ, in effect, tells me before the hearing begins that he or she has already decided to approve the claim. The ALJ wants to make sure I know so I get the hearing over quickly. This seems to be an effort to disguise an OTR. What's the point of this? Are ALJs afraid that if they do too many OTRs that something will happen to them? If so, who or what put this fear in them? What's the threat? To me, this just seems pointless. Some cases are appropriate for OTR, regardless of who the decision maker is. Who wants to slow down the process of approving people who obviously deserve to be approved?
