This morning’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contains this article on the wait time for disability determinations in Wisconsin. It notes that the long delay in hearings in Madison has led to the addition of new judges and a new office in Madison:
[Social Security Commissioner Michael] Astrue said that the Social Security office in Madison is being upgraded from a satellite office to a full hearing office, which along with the Milwaukee site gives the state two full offices for hearing appeals. As part of the upgrade, the number of administrative law judges hearing appeals in Madison will triple, going from two to six, he said.
In addition, the Mount Pleasant, Mich., office will also start handling some Wisconsin appeals. By next year, these steps will start to relieve some of the burden on the Milwaukee office and drive down wait times statewide, Astrue said.
The article also discusses the state furlough of employees at the Wisconsin Disability Determination Bureau, which is a source of contention between SSA and the state government:
Disability claims in Wisconsin are first decided by the state Disability Determination Bureau, which also handles initial appeals before sending cases on to federal offices for a second round of appeals. The Determination Bureau is run by the state but paid for with federal money.
Astrue renewed his criticism of a decision by Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration to furlough the bureau’s federally paid workers amid the state budget crisis, even though it doesn’t save the state anything. Astrue said the furloughs increases wait times for disabled applicants for benefits and on Friday he unveiled federal legislation that would ban the practice by states like Wisconsin.
Officials in the Doyle administration have defended their action, saying they are furloughing all state workers because it would be unfair to exempt any group of employees. Stephanie Smiley, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health Services, said that despite the furloughs, Wisconsin has been bucking the national trend by whittling down its own backlog of people waiting for an initial decision on disability benefits.
State figures show the average wait time for applicants so far this year has decreased to 72 days from 108 days for the same period last year. At the same time, the national average for state offices so far this year rose to 90 days from 80 days last year.
But Astrue said that one reason Wisconsin is making progress is because the federal government has stepped in to help by transferring some cases out of the state.
With regard to cases at the hearing level, I have noticed a significant decrease in the wait times for cases at the Milwaukee hearing office. Milwaukee ODAR has taken over its Green Bay case load and continues to move the cases along at a good pace. The cases from the Fox Valley continue to be handled by the hearing office out of Santa Barbara, California.
With respect to cases pending at the DDB, I have seen a large number of my cases sent to SSA’s offices in Baltimore for disability determinations, rather than being assigned to DDB in Madison.
