Return of signatory authority

[admin]

here is the AALJ comment.  They sure seem to want to alienate their writing staff as much as possible.

[admin]

Here is a copy of Jim Hitchcock's comments to the Commissioner

[admin]

Here is a response we received.



______________________________________________
From:    Astrue, Michael J. 
Sent:   Wednesday, December 19, 2007 2:03 PM
To:   Hitchcock, Jim
Cc:   deSoto, Lisa; Cristaudo, Frank
Subject:   RE: Sr. Atty. program

Jim: I appreciate the tenor and thoughtfulness of your letter--would that everybody who would like us to do something different handled it the same way. We have a short-term scheduling issue with the holidays, but let's shoot to do a videoconference as early as we can in January. Mike  Frank: Can you be the point person for scheduling? Mike

_____________________________________________
From:    Hitchcock, Jim 
Sent:   Wednesday, December 19, 2007 1:49 PM
To:   Astrue, Michael J.
Cc:   deSoto, Lisa; Cristaudo, Frank
Subject:   Sr. Atty. program

 << File: 12-07 to Commissioner Astrue re Sr Atty implementation-final edit.doc >>

[barkley]

How did that go?

[jrh83]

The follow-up the COSS never occured.  Jim Hitchcock was able to have a short, in person chat with Chief Judge Cristaudo in Atlanta.  He advised that he campaigned to bring back signatory authority.  He had to battle with several vehment opponent groups that contended that the original Sr. Atty program had been a [insert insulting adjective like "abject" or "dismal"] failure.

I guess this means the COSS and CALJ disagreed with those oppenents.  I wonder who other than the AALJ opposed the program.

[jrh83]

NTEU said @80 more Sr. Attorneys are going to be selected in the near future.  How "near" is left undefined.  Sr. Atty's may ask for ME interrogatories and may get authority to order CE's.

At the same time official policy keeps adding more clerical duties to Sr. Atty's and ALJ's which significantly reduce the time available to actually screen/review cases and draft decisions.

Just another example of HQ policies allegedly directed at "saving" time at the early stages that totally ignore the fact the policies cause more work for the highest paid employees at the latter stages

[admin]

The COSS says the number of Sr. Atty's is about to be increased to 450.

the natural reaction is to say this is great, but history tells me it may be a Trojan horse.

Too many Sr. Atty's create workload problems.  There often will not be enough "profile" cases to go around and additional "profiles" have fewer OTR's per cases screened.  I suspect that the goals per Sr. Atty. will remain the same.  Therefore, it will become MUCH harder to achieve those goals.  At the same time, it is likely to reduce ALJ writing resources causing another problem that our critics will blame Sr. Atty's for.

The Sr. Atty program received this exact type of criticism in the 1990's.  We should not be surprised to face it again.

[bnbeach]

Reviewing cases and writing decisions based on the reviews is much more interesting than just drafting.  However, I have to agree that there seem to have been more administrative duties added, which drags down production time.