Post by lawmaker on May 15, 2009 23:23:57 GMT -5
Moreover, it is possible that someone important outside of the SSA has posed probing questions to the SSA about its ALJ selection and hiring practices. If you'll recall, some Forum members have raised serious questions as to whether or not the SSA's ALJ selection and hiring process runs afoul of merit system principles. Certainly enough time has now lapsed since the February 26, 2008 ALJ offers were extended that important people may have caught wind of the surrounding controversy. Those important people could be folks from OPM that have a statutory and regulatory duty to protect the merit system principles. Or those important people could be members of Congress.
There can be little doubt that if someone from OPM or Congress has made inquiries of the SSA about its ALJ selection and hiring process then the forthcoming offers could be pushed back to the end of May or even sometime in June 2009. And in the worst case scenario OPM could recall or cancel the March 2009 certificate of ALJ eligibles. Attached to SSA ALJ Wenzel's February 2009 declaration was a copy of an OPM letter to the SSA from around a decade ago wherein OPM recalled or canceled a certificate of ALJ eligibles that OPM had previously issued to the SSA.
But for those Forum members that are current SSA employees whose GAL included an ODAR Hearing Office in your present city of residence, the delay may bode extremely well for you. If the SSA doesn't push back the June 22 report date for the first one-half of the new hires, then the SSA may be inclined to extend ALJ offers to candidates that already reside in the city where the ALJ slot is to be filled. Moreover, the SSA certainly knows that the ALJ candidates not presently employed by the SSA in the city where the ALJ slot is to be filled would be hard pressed to enter on duty (EOD) as a SSA ALJ on Sunday, June 21, 2009, with an initial report date of Monday, June 22, 2009.
And since someone inquired, in February 2008 the SSA extended 144 ALJ job offers. Per information previously released by the SSA, there were precisely 11 declinations. My math indicates that this declination percentage was less than 10 percent.
I have no reliable information as to the declination percentage associated with the ALJ job offers extended off of the second certificate of ALJ eligibles (and the associated supplement) later in 2008.
A number of participants on this list mentioned that in many cases reference checks continued after the hire date. SO I am not sure that would necessarily cause a delay.
If OPM is the inquiring party - then they need to look at their own problems with regard to the extent to which they ran afoul of merit selection processes themselves. pet kettle black and so on
I can't imagine that OPM is even slightly worried about the AALJ suit. That's hardly an inducement to pull back a certificate.
I believe I remember the time when the cert was cancelled. I think it may have been because of the litigation. It was somewhere around 98 or 99 I think. I remember a friend getting an interview and telling me they pulled the cert back because of litigation
Unless you know of some other smack down waiting in the wings to stop the cert, the only generally known about is the AALJ one.
If Congress is the party in interest - the only interest they have ever had was in getting the offices populated with aljs. Delays would be met with further complaints by constituents and the press.
I can't see that anything soc sec did in selection would raise anyone's hackles that didn't get their hackles raised over the last 20 years. The crazy selection process hasn't changed to less or more crazy over that time. Sort of spitting in the wind at this point.
As far as the speculation about placing candidates in the city where the live. That would go against the selection process and rule of 3. Moreover the real issue time constraint isn't the placement so much as the training. It's schedule, people have built their vacation schedules around those dates, and hotels and other contracts have been effectuated such that it would not be the easiest thing to simply move.
I can't prove it but my guess is that the single most significant delaying factor for the hire is the fact that ssa and every other agency are conducting other huge hires and hr and opm are universally overwhelmed and backlogged with this massive undertaking. There's an awful lot of paperwork involved in cutting hires for 150 or so aljs. When you compile the rest of the workload for hiring from ssa and every other agency, you have one countable and measurable and transparent delaying factor. Never mind all the other workload everyone else has to deal with
