Senate holds hearing on Social Security office closures, service cuts

Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging held a hearing to examine the impact of recent Social Security field office closures and service cuts. The hearing, the culmination of a bipartisan committee staff investigation into service reductions at the Social Security Administration, comes at a time when baby boomers are filing record numbers of retirement, disability and survivor claims with the agency. Despite the rising demand, budget cuts have, in part, led the agency to close 64 field offices and 533 temporary mobile offices since 2010. The SSA has also shed some 11,000 workers over the last three years and continues to reduce or eliminate a variety of in-person services while trying to shift seniors and others online to conduct their business. The AFT is among a number of unions and organizations calling on Congress to fully fund the SSA’s budget. A petition generated by the Alliance for Retired Americans and Social Security Works has already collected more than 95,000 signatures.

Among those impacted by the closings are men and women eligible for Medicare, many of whom visit the field offices for information and to enroll in the program. Tammy DeLong, a Medicare specialist for the Aroostook Area Agency on Aging in Presque Isle, Maine, testified about some of the beneficiaries she comes into contact with every day—and their need for face-to-face interaction with Social Security staff.

“Going onto Medicare for most people is a life-changing event, one that scares and confuses even the most educated individual. They don’t want to do the wrong thing,” says DeLong. “The comfort of having someone local, who they can call and ask for by name, is a huge stress reliever.”

DeLong said that 2,500 people came to the Maine agency for assistance related to Social Security and Medicare last year. “About 80 percent of them are over age 65; the others are either close to 65 and thinking of retirement or are disabled.”

DeLong pointed out that Social Security personnel cannot provide information or counsel beneficiaries about certain Medicare benefits, so they often turn to her agency for help. She helps beneficiaries understand what Medicare is, how it works, what they need for coverage and how to get that coverage. However, not a day goes by that DeLong doesn’t have to reach out to her local Social Security office with a question or problem a beneficiary has approached her with. “The problems are solved quickly and professionally by the local Social Security office. I know you don’t get that kind of service through telephone call centers,” says DeLong.

Most beneficiaries, she adds, “want to sit and talk to someone in person, where they are a name and not just a number, which is why the local Social Security office is so important.”

SSA is ‘committed’ to field office structure

Nancy Berryhill, the SSA’s deputy commissioner for operations, told the senators during the hearing that the SSA is committed—now and in the future—to sustaining a field office structure that provides face-to-face service for those customers who need or prefer such service.

However, Berryhill noted that there are factors that determine how services are delivered, including the embrace of technology by consumers, the increasing demand for services and budget constraints.

“Customer expectations are evolving due to changes in technology, demographics and other factors,” she says. “The budget also affects our ability to deliver services, regardless of service delivery channel,” says Berryhill, who pointed out that for the past several years, the SSA has received less than what the president requested for its budget. “That level of underfunding has presented us with challenges in providing the public with the level of service it expects. We look to Congress to provide us with adequate, sustained and predictable funding to help us serve the millions of Americans who depend on us every day.”

Brenda Holt knows all too well the impact of losing access to field offices. Holt, a commissioner in Gadsden County, Fla., testified before the senators about the closure of a field office in her county.

“It’s been three months since our field office has shut down. I am both upset about what happened and hopeful that maybe we can get service restored in the future,” says Holt. Her community has nearly 60,000 members—including 10,000 seniors—who have been served by a Social Security field office in the county seat of Quincy, which is about 45 minutes away from Tallahassee.

The Quincy office shut down in March on short notice, and there was no time to try to stop the shutdown from happening, says Holt.

Most of the community’s seniors did not know about the planned closure, and the worry now is that many of them will not be able to travel to Tallahassee or Marianna, the two closest Social Security offices, says Holt. In an effort to address the loss of its field office, the county worked to put in a video unit in the local libraries that seniors could use to talk to an SSA employee.

“It is a fine resource, but it is no replacement for a field office, with staffers who can walk our residents through a host of issues they may be having,” says Holt. She says the community has a lot of special needs citizens, ranging from those with vision problems to those with hearing problems or poor comprehension problems. “The computer is not the answer for many of these people,” she says.

The whole process saddens Holt. “We never had an opportunity to weigh in as a community to try to save our office,” she says. She hopes that funding will become available to restore the field office in her community.

“And I want to make sure Social Security remembers that even if it no longer has a physical presence in our community, it still needs to find ways to serve us going forward,” Holt says. “Our needs matter, and we won’t just be cast aside. Our seniors have paid their dues. Now it is time for this country to help them.” [Adrienne Coles/ U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging press release] 

June 27, 2014