250 more ALJs?

[deadwood]

From the Capitol Insider put out by the Disability Policy Collaboration:

The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on Tuesday on the conference report on the FY 2008 appropriations bill for the Departments of L-HHS-ED [Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Department, but also includes the Social Security Administration]. Should the conference report on the Labor-HHS-Ed appropriations bill be passed in the House, the Senate is expected to vote on the bill this week. House and Senate Democratic leadership have yet to announce a final strategy on which appropriations bills, singly or in combination, to send to the President for his signature or veto.

The Labor-HHS-Ed conference report is expected to include an appropriation of nearly $9.9 billion for the Social Security Administration’s funding to cover administration of its programs, known as its Limitation on Administrative Expenses (LAE). This amount is $576 million above the FY 2007 level and $275 million above the President’s request for FY 2008. Much of the increase will simply allow SSA to keep pace with inflation in office leases, security expenses, and employee salary and benefits costs. In addition, the National Council of Social Security Management Associations predicts that the Conference Report amount will allow SSA to hire about 250 more administrative law judges to help reduce the backlog in hearings for claimants with disabilities.

Taken from: socsecnews.blogspot.com/

[privateatty]

Now we're talking! 250 more indeed!

Who is point on this in Congress--the Chair of the House's Subcommittee on SSA? If so, Let's get some letters out fellow bloggers!

I already wrote my Senator (doing the concerned constituent shtick) who is on the Senate Committee overseeing SSA....

[3orangewhips]

I'm betting its a typo.

[semipa]

The 150 in 08 and 125 in 09 was also reported in Federal Times this week:

Understaffed Social Security braces for retirement boom
By STEPHEN LOSEY
November 06, 2007
The Social Security Administration has a problem.
The first baby boomers started applying for Social Security retirement benefits last month, signaling what is certain to be a huge demand for the agency’s services.
Yet the agency has its lowest staffing levels in 35 years.
SSA expects its staffing to dip to fewer than 60,000 by next September, spokesman Mark Lassiter said last week. That’s the lowest level since 1973, the year before Congress ordered the agency to ramp up staffing to handle a new supplemental security income program, which provides cash for elderly, blind and disabled people to pay for food, clothing and shelter.

Since 2001, Congress has cut nearly a combined $1 billion from SSA’s budget requests, leaving it without enough money to replace departing employees.
And this downsizing has now contributed to a growing backlog of 747,000 disability claims cases awaiting resolution.
“This is a cause for concern,” Lassiter said. “We’re seeing a significant increase in the number of disability claims in recent years directly because of the baby boomers. And we can’t do any hiring.”
Lassiter said SSA imposed a hiring freeze at the start of the current fiscal year. Congress has not yet passed any spending bills, so the agency — like all others in government — is operating under a continuing resolution that keeps its funding at the 2007 level of $9.3 billion.
Pending spending bills would fund the agency this year at $9.9 billion.
Once the agency gets a spending bill passed and can hire, ramp-up plans are modest.
To whittle down its backlog of disability claims cases, the agency plans to hire more administrative law judges: 150 by spring and 125 more in 2009. SSA wants to have 1,250 judges in all by September.
The agency expects to lose about 65 of its 1,040 administrative law judges to attrition over the next two years. Lassiter said SSA also will hire 92 support staffers this fiscal year to assist the judges.
The agency plans to replace only one of every two state disability determination service (DDS) employees who leave in 2008, Lassiter said. These SSA-funded offices decide whether people claiming severe disabilities should receive benefits.
About 1,500 of the 15,000 DDS employees nationwide are expected to retire in 2008, and 750 are expected to be replaced.
The budget crunch also keeps today’s SSA employees from doing their job.
Jim Fell, president of the Federal Managers Association chapter that represents SSA’s Office of Disability Adjudication Review managers, said managers under the continuing resolution have to severely limit the amount of overtime employees work. Employees also can’t travel to work on cases, and supplies are limited, Fell said.
Even though Congress’ proposed budget would be $100 million more than what President Bush proposed, Fell doesn’t expect much to change soon.
“You can’t turn the backlog around on a dime when your funding’s been cut for six years,” Fell said.
Lassiter said the newly hired judges will take some time to be trained before they can have a positive effect on the backlogs.
“This lets us start to turn the tide,” Lassiter said. “This is going to take a few years.”
But the backlog isn’t likely to decrease any time soon, let alone vanish. SSA said last month the backlog grew by more than 31,000 cases in 2007.

[morgullord]

In the most recent issue of the AARP Bulletin, CoSS was quoted as saying that SSA intended to hire between 150 and 185 administrative law judges in 2008. While this may be good news for those of us hoping to be hired, the fact is that with only 92 additional support staff to be hired, SSA is not going to make a significant inroad on the backlog. Most of the backlog consists of cases that are not yet prepared for a hearing. If the capacity to prepare those cases is not increased, then nothing is accomplished other than to divide, by way of example, 200 hearings per month by ten judges instead of eight judges.

[deadwood]

morgullord said:

In the most recent issue of the AARP Bulletin, CoSS was quoted as saying that SSA intended to hire between 150 and 185 administrative law judges in 2008. While this may be good news for those of us hoping to be hired, the fact is that with only 92 additional support staff to be hired, SSA is not going to make a significant inroad on the backlog. Most of the backlog consists of cases that are not yet prepared for a hearing. If the capacity to prepare those cases is not increased, then nothing is accomplished other than to divide, by way of example, 200 hearings per month by ten judges instead of eight judges.

ALJs are always free to review raw cases in search of OTRs. This isn't difficult to do and saves a lot of time (and reduces the need for additional support staff) because for each raw case that is decided OTR, the case doesn't have to be pulled, scheduled, heard, and then drafted by a decision writer.

The only things that the support staff would have to do with the case are close and mail it.

[southerner]

In our office, ALJ's do not engage in much in the way of screens for OTR.

SA signatory just started this week, but they are unable to order CE's or submit VE/ME interrogatories.

Unfortunately, at least as of yesterday, they lacked the capacity for AVIDing while Central Office was trying to rectify that oversight.

[southerner]

Re AARP Bulletin, Astrue references that smaller increase in funding would allow SSA to hire no more than 150 out of 185 ALJ's it neets, not hire 150-185 next year.

[Pixie]

Don't anyone be getting your hopes up for large numbers of judges to be added in the next couple of years. Pix.

[kingfisher]

ALJs are always free to review raw cases in search of OTRs.
[/quote]

I guess that depends on the office. I volunteered to do that and was rebuffed. It was hard to tell whether management did not trust ALJs with the raw files or whether senior attorneys did not want to give up this task to ALJs.

[Pixie]

Probably because ODAR management types are loathe to implement something they didn't think of, or that isn't mandated from the beltway or from region. This is especially so if it uses staff time.

[learnedhand]

Kingfisher, do you get enough cases to hear? If so, maybe you can increase your dockets. The idea of review other than what you do to get ready for a hearing (and that may result in some otrs) is actually a waste of your time. Any task should be performed as low on the food chain as possible, not as high. The thing that you can do that no one else can do (except very recently the SAs) is make a decision. So as much time as possible should be devoted to that function.

[kingfisher]

learnedhand said:

Kingfisher, do you get enough cases to hear? If so, maybe you can increase your dockets. The idea of review other than what you do to get ready for a hearing (and that may result in some otrs) is actually a waste of your time. Any task should be performed as low on the food chain as possible, not as high. The thing that you can do that no one else can do (except very recently the SAs) is make a decision. So as much time as possible should be devoted to that function.

Fascinating perspective ~ I have been performing all tasks as high on the food chain as possible. Exhausting, but true. What you propose is a different type of balancing act. Any practical suggestions?

[learnedhand]

Back to my original question, have you run out of cases to hear? Meaning, are you waiting for cases to hear because there aren't enough worked up cases? Are you having a hard time getting full dockets because there aren't enough cases to schedule? What would keep you from hearing and deciding more cases?

[barkley]

deadwood said:

[
ALJs are always free to review raw cases in search of OTRs. This isn't difficult to do and saves a lot of time (and reduces the need for additional support staff) because for each raw case that is decided OTR, the case doesn't have to be pulled, scheduled, heard, and then drafted by a decision writer.

A question and a comment. Are there really offices where the judges draft their own OTRs? We have some excellent judges, but if they have time to do some screening and find anything, the cases are given to the Senior Attys for writing (although that may change now.)

There seems to be a suggestion that if a judge has time to screen, there must be something wrong with their case load management or something. Sometimes it is a matter of a judge outlines their day - they have caught up on the mundane decisions they must make each day and have finished their prep for hearings the next day and there are 45 minutes left on the clock and they are just not in the mood to think hard any more. I appreciate the judges who are willing to find a couple of cases for quick screens rather than finding some way to kill time. Thanks to them.

[learnedhand]

They are not in the mood to think anymore and are screening cases?

We have had judges in our office try to write OTRs. It was a disaster. They were usually in "quick" mode and missed the earnings issue or something else that resulted in the case being returned by the payment center or field office, often for an amended decision.

I think a better use of that 45 minutes would be to catch up on professional reading that they haven't had a chance to read. Or, if that is all done, maybe there is some paper that they've been meaning to sort to throw out or some other task that they wanted to do and never seem to get the chance.