Iowa v. IG

[jrh83]

The IG chose to pursue several attorney-advisors for over four years, asserting that in drafting decisions per an ALJ's instructions they had made material misstatements/omissions.  They pursued them in spite of the fact that a grand jury and two US attorneys refused to pursue any charges.  They pursued them in spite of the fact management refused to sanction the attorney-advisors.  It is my understanding that the refusals were generally based on the conclusion that the IG's concerns were groundless.

I believe the IG's concerns were groundless.  I don't believe there were any real misstatements or omissions.  The VE interrogatory answers were to general hypotheticals, without ANY reference to a specific claimant.  A copy of those answers was in each file.  The decisions were O-T-R, so there was no suggestion that any sort of hearing was held.  Contrary to rumors of hundreds of decisions found unsupported, posted prior to the withdrawal of charges, the decisions were all found defensible on review.  Finally, the fact the IG dropped all the charges and promised not to pursue any more against the Iowa attorneys speaks louder than the IG’s words that they were not “exonerated”.

At the same time the IG has announced a plan to launch multiple investigations of local ODAR practices.  The post-settlement press release seemed to indicate the IG believes “wrongdoing” is rampant.  I support the IG in prosecuting real wrongdoers, but this incident shakes my faith in his ability to differentiate “wrongdoing” from “innovative” or “unusual”.

[saltchunk]

Are you an Iowa attorney - newbie?  If so congrats on having the IG back off.  I hope the cost of representation didn't bankrupt anybody.  I have to say, the IG actions freaked out attorneys across the nation.  Of course, we don't know the full story - as I believe the IG mentioned in a statement.  Thanks for writing a bit about it and best of luck to you. 

[barkley]

The thing that troubles me about the Iowa situation is that OHA, back when it was still in HHS in the 80s, got into a huge amount of trouble over its boilerplate decisions, with the Courts finding claimant's were individuals and should be given individual attention.  Over the years, we have had boilerplate officially creep more and more into our decisions.  FITS, while making it real easy on people who don't know how to write real decisions, goes is bad enough.  Having boilerplate VE testimony just goes too far.  If the cases in Iowa were so good that decisions could be made OTR, why muck up the decisions with generic VE statements.