Articles from prior issues of The Advocate

September/October, 2001

Disability Field Operations Director Addresses Program Concerns
by Carla Young, Missouri DDS

DURING THE AWARDS LUNCHEON HELD Thursday, August 23, 2001, members attending the State MADE conference had the pleasure of listening to Thomas Finigan, Director of Division of Field Disability Operations in the Social Security Administration’s Office of Disability. In this position, he is responsible for providing program standards, leadership and oversight. This involves maintaining federal-state relations and monitoring the $1.5 billion annual budget allocated to the state DDSs.

According to Finigan, golf is a good metaphor for life. You never really get what you want but you do get a lot of good things. Being a disability examiner and a golfer have their similarities, so we should enjoy the good things we do get. We should seize the day in our work environments. He complimented our state saying Missouri has done a good job for many years with Mr. Scully showing much leadership and direction.

Finigan began immediate discussion on pay raises for our employees. He stated Social Security works with the states but tends to respect each Governor’s decisions on pay raises based on his/her state’s situation. Attrition and retention are the biggest problems in many states. So the question, how do we keep people long enough to even get them trained? There have been options presented and Mr. Finigan plans to go back and look at these. Money is tight on the national level but they intend to look at retention and training costs also. Despite the situation, Finigan said working with the states was the most enjoyable part of his career.

Mr. Finigan stated President Bush has a mandate to change Social Security and has a team in place. The President has appointed Mitchell Daniels, well known for his fiscal frugality, as budget director. Arranging and passing the budget is a long process which begins in February, when the staff looks at the first draft. They have until September 5 to look at appropriation bills. If there is not a complete resolution on the budget before October 1, agencies continue working under a continuing resolution. Mr. Finigan stated at the beginning of the year we probably will not have all of the money we need. But as in years past, we will try and go about business as usual and try and get through it. He feels when money is put on the table for hiring additional employees and for overtime if needed, it helps to keep spirits up.

President Bush has nominated Jo Anne Barnhart to be the new Commissioner. Mr. Finigan said she is very experienced but faces some real challenges such as high pendings in many states. He stated Missouri has done a remarkable job here with pendings. But all states aren’t Missouri and they have work to do with the average states. Continued evaluation of Prototype needs to be done. How do we pay for it? The cost for a regular case done is $377 on average while the average cost of doing a Prototype case is $415. But you have a better case with Prototype. The programmatic costs for disability cases runs nearly $115 million. Preliminary data shows there are some significant program costs for Prototype cases, and this will definitely be a decision for the new commissioner.

Mr. Finigan told us there are also lower level work groups doing a variety of things to improve Social Security. A group working on E-DIB, which is an automated disability process, has been studying how to use the computer more effectively. In the future, DDSs could pull data down directly from the SSA system on top of our own.

Regarding CDRs, Mr. Finigan states we’re doing great! CDRs fund 25 percent of our DDS operations, so we need them. Out of the about 1.3 million CDRs done, 76,000 have been ceased, which gave $6 billion worth of savings. For every $1.00 put into working CDRs, $12.00 is turned back into the trust funds. Missouri is ahead in the total number of cleared cases.

Mr. Finigan seemed to realize the obstacles faced by our employees but did confess he did not know how much could be done with pay raises right now. He encouraged us all to continue the good work we’re doing and to realize how important our work is and how much help we do give the citizens of our state.