Guarding The Northern Frontier

     If you are an Alaska resident and have the misfortune of becoming disabled, you'd better hope your Social Security disability claim is approved at the initial or reconsideration level, because if it's not, you probably won't be approved on appeal. Alaska has two Administrative Law Judges (ALJs), both of whom have extremely low allowance rates, around 20%. Their productivity is also low. As a result, backlogs are extremely high at the Alaska hearing office. It's so hard to win there that there are no Social Security attorneys left to represent claimants there. They could no longer make a living after these two ALJs came in. A local newspaper is reporting on the situation but don't expect anything to come of it. I have no doubt that there would be Congressional hearings if there was some other hearing office with only two ALJs who each approved 80% of the cases they heard but 20%? No problem.

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of the personnel who make initial and reconsideration determinations on Social Security disability claims,  has issued its Winter 2016 newsletter.

Their Only Real Interest Is Selling Insurance

     From Daniel Marans writing for the Huffington Post:

The largest seniors group in the country has launched a campaign to get presidential candidates to discuss their plans for Social Security -- only it won’t say which Social Security reforms it prefers, and progressive retirement policy leaders are none too happy about it.

 AARP, a nonprofit with 37 million members all over the age of 50, announced its “Take A Stand” initiative last November. The organization is asking presidential candidates to present their detailed plans for shoring up Social Security’s finances and ensuring that its benefits are adequate now and in the future. ...

The campaign includes a multi-million-dollar TV advertising blitz in early primary states. In one of the spots, a donkey and an elephant stand by as a phone with “Social Security” on the caller ID continues to ring.

“You can’t deal with something by ignoring it,” the narrator says. “But that’s how some candidates seem to be dealing with Social Security.” ...

[T]he campaign refrains from passing judgment on the merit of the candidates’ Social Security plans. As long as they propose ways to close the program’s long-term funding gap and maintain adequate benefits, AARP gives the candidates credit for “taking a stand.” ...

AARP’s neutrality about the substance of the candidates’ plans rankles progressive advocates, who have taken a strong stance against benefit cuts and believe that the country’s largest and most-recognized senior organization should as well. ...

A Different Route That Doesn't Involve Social Security?

     In early January the President announced that the Social Security Administration would begin a rulemaking process to allow the agency to notify, in some cases, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System about the appointment of a representative payee for a Social Security recipient. The idea is that if a person is mentally incompetent to handle money, he or she is probably not competent to buy a firearm. The first step in the rulemaking process is for an agency to send a draft proposal to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for approval. It was already almost too late for Social Security to finish action on a rulemaking on this subject when the President made the announcement but Social Security still hasn't sent over a proposal to OMB. If they were going to do this while Obama was still President they should be rushing but they're not. I've been wondering what's going on. Then, I see a link to this article in Modern Healthcare, of all places:

Senators on Wednesday expressed strong bipartisan support for bills that would improve the interactions of the mentally ill and the police, but clashed on how to pay for the reform and how it might affect gun ownership. ... 

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) last summer introduced a bill that encourages states to share more mental health records for use in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.  

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he thinks Cornyn's bill, which is approved by the National Rifle Association, would make it easier, not harder, for people with severe mental illness to acquire firearms.  

“I'd like to make clear while there's broad bipartisan consensus for provisions that include how we treat mental illness, that consensus does not exist for provisions that make it easier for mentally ill individuals to get guns,” Schumer said.

Cornyn vehemently denied that. He has said his bill improves the background check system without expanding it. ... 

The mental health reform bills discussed during Wednesday's hearing aren't the only ones on the table. A bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), which does not include language on guns, is expected to move through the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee soon. ... 

Cornyn has said he has talked with HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) about eventually combining the bills. But Democrats have pushed back on that suggestion, because of the provisions on gun control.

     I'm suspecting that the White House is holding off on a Social Security rulemaking in hopes that there is some legislative action on this issue.
     Honestly, does anyone, including the NRA, want to demand access to firearms for paranoid schizophrenics who have had repeated involuntary commitments because they have become a danger to themselves or others? I hope that even the NRA can't be that crazy. Ted Nugent, yes, but the entire organization?

Keeping Secrets

     Those of us on the outside learned recently about Social Security's secret repository of precedents used in deciding some cases. We only learned about this because it came up in the context of the agency's arcane policies on pooled trusts. I'm hearing that this repository covers more than pooled trusts. How much more I don't know, since Social Security employees aren't supposed to be telling anyone but I hear that the agency put out some instructions on the handling of the cases of the former clients of Eric Conn using this secret repository and that the agency made sure than at least some Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) were made aware of these instructions. I'm also hearing that the agency's Office of General Counsel was giving ALJs some suggestions on how to deal with objections that attorneys were filing in those cases -- specific language to use in decisions. I don't know how these recommendations were conveyed to the ALJs. This sounds a lot like ex parte contacts to me.

Ironic, Isn't It?

     Social Security recently let slip the fact that they have a secret repository of precedents they use in deciding cases. Now, this comes out:

From: ^Internal Communications
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2016 1:01 PM
Subject: Help US Build SSA's Next Open Government Plan!
Importance: High

A Message To All SSA and DDS Employees

Subject: Help US Build SSA's Next Open Government Plan!

Since President Obama issued his Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government on his first day in office in 2009, Social Security has been steadfastly committed to ensuring that the work we do on behalf of the public is done openly and transparently. 

To achieve the goal of making our agency more open, we have published Open Government Plans every two years since 2010. We published our most recent Open Government Plan in June 2014. These plans lay out our strategies and commitments towards breaking down the barriers between our agency and the people we serve. To enrich and inform the actions of these past plans, we actively engaged employees, as well as stakeholders in the public and private sectors about their ideas and suggestions for strengthening our Open Government efforts. These engagements have been critical in creating our past plans, and will be even more critical as we craft the next one.

This June, SSA will be publishing our fourth Open Government Plan, and we encourage you to share your ideas on how we can improve our transparency, participation, and collaboration through our Open Government Plan 4.0 Feedback Process. Once there, you can review our last Open Government Plan and participate in the conversation.

Your input will be vital as we prepare this updated plan. By advancing efforts to operate more transparently, encourage internal and external collaboration, and engage the public in the work we do, we are will advance our mission of delivering Social Security services that meet the changing needs of the public.

Ruby Burrell

Chief Strategic Officer

Performance Improvement Officer

Appeals Council Has To Work An Extra Hour

     Due to inclement weather, Social Security's offices in the Baltimore area are opening four hours late today. However, the Appeals Council, which is in Falls Church, VA, is supposed to follow the guidance of the Office of Personnel Management, which has decided upon opening federal offices in the D.C. area three hours late.

Secret Law

     From Emergency Message EM-16006, issued by Social Security on February 12: 

To ensure consistent pooled trust reviews and pooled trust precedents across regions, we are providing further guidance to field office (FO) technicians, regional trust reviewer teams (RTRT), and regional trust leads (RTL) on reviewing pooled trusts and establishing pooled trust precedents in the Supplemental Security Income Trust Monitoring System SharePoint Repository for Precedents (SSITMS SharePoint). ...

IMPORTANT: Do not share copies of trust precedents, Regional Chief Counsel (RCC) opinions and other materials in the SSITMS SharePoint precedent file with the public, attorneys, or non-SSA personnel. The only publicly available precedents are available in the PS section of Program Operations Manual System (POMS) on our website. ...

     The agency has established a repository of precedents that it refuses to share with the public. Does anybody else find this inappropriate? Is this consistent with the principle of open government?