Wait times for disability hearings before Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) at the Social Security Administration have never been worse according to Inspector General Patrick O’Carroll Jr. There are more than 1 million people across the country that are waiting for hearings before ALJs and the national average wait time to process disability claims for hearings was up to 450 days by the fall of 2015.
One hearings office close to the Minneapolis area offers even longer waiting times than the national average and an employee at that office is now in trouble for publicly discussing difficulties this office is having in terms of processing hearing requests.
Recently a Social Security employee in the Milwaukee hearings office said that claimants having to wait such a long time for a hearing at the office have a right to due process, which they are not receiving.
This employee has been put on administrative leave after publicly discussing problems and delays in the Milwaukee office. This employee is being called a whistleblower in some circles and claims Social Security is breaking its own rules that it set forth. One of this employee’s main contentions were that the Milwaukee hearings office was transferring hearing requests to other jurisdictions making it seem like the Milwaukee hearings office was actually making progress in reducing the backlog.
It is not uncommon for hearings offices to transfer hearing requests to other offices to be heard by judges in outside jurisdictions to lighted backlog loads, so the Milwaukee hearings office cannot really be blamed for that. But, considering Milwaukee has one of the longest wait times for hearing requests in the Midwest there are really no answers as to why Milwaukee is falling further behind than other jurisdictions. To read more about this situation and the analysis that surrounds it click here.
