Social Security Administration

Social Security Administration will resume paper statements of estimated benefits to certain workers age 60 and up beginning next month, according to a letter from the agency's commissioner released this morning by two senators. In the letter dated Jan. 20, Social Security CommissionerMichael J. Astruesaid the agency will begin mailing paper statements to workers 60 and older next month. Additionally, workers at age 25 will receive a first-time paper statement by the end of this year that is accompanied by an explanation of the program.

An emergency drill at the Woodlawn-based Social Security Administration is likely to cause traffic delays Friday near Security Boulevard and Woodlawn Drive. Most employees from the Security West building will be evacuated from the facilities during the drill. The public is encouraged to take a different route to avoid delays. The drill will take place in the afternoon, but Social Security declined to announce a specific time. The exercise is required in accordance with federal, state and local requirements to prepare employees for any future threats they may encounter.

President Barack Obama is expected to soon nominate a new head of the Social Security Administration, replacing an incumbent appointed by his predecessor, George W. Bush, but the White House is mum on who should take the helm at the agency, which faces voluminous backlogs, potential insolvency and a raft of critics. Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue's six-year term expires Jan. 19. His successor must be confirmed by the Senate, in a process that Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, expects will take a couple of months from the hearings to a vote.

We baby boomers get blamed for just about every economic hiccup, because there are so many of us. And our children are particularly furious because they believe the crisis in Social Security, which may affect their ability to retire, can be laid at our feet like kindling for a burning at the stake. They are convinced we boomers, with our outsized appetites and sense of entitlement, are going to consume everything on our way to the cemetery, right down to the amount of ground we leave for those who die after us. But data from the Social Security Administration itself, provided by chief actuary Stephen Goss, demonstrates that boomers are not the pig-through-the-python that we have been described as being.

Advocates for plain language have issued their first report card on how clearly federal agencies communicate with taxpayers and others - and the Social Security Administration has drawn a pair of C's. That put the Woodlawn-based administration in the middle of the dozen agencies assessed by the Center for Plain Language. The Washington-based organization promotes clear, easy-to-understand communication in government, business, nonprofits and academia. On the first anniversary of the Plain Writing Act, the center graded each agency this month on how well it has met the requirements of the law and how well it has followed the "spirit" of the legislation.

Just when Washington looked like it was completely preoccupied with the scandals, real and imaginary, swirling around the White House, a group of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate managed the unexpected (and, these days, extraordinary): They agreed on something. The vote Tuesday night in the Senate Judiciary Committee to forward to the floor a massive overhaul of the nation's immigration system was, to be sure, a small step and doesn't guarantee success in the full Senate, much less the House of Representatives.

WASHINGTON -- With Republicans promising legislative ZTC action, the Social Security Administration underwent another round of sharp criticism on Capitol Hill yesterday for delays in handling disability claims and for failing to weed out recipients who are no longer disabled.Saying the program "is in real trouble," Rep. Jim Bunning, a Kentucky Republican who heads the Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee, vowed, "We're going to do something about it."The SSA probably won't like what we do, but we're going to do it anyway.

A decade ago, the Social Security Administration lent its sister agency four very valuable items for its 30th anniversary: a pen that President Lyndon B. Johnson used to sign the Medicare Act into law, the gavel used in the House of Representatives to mark the act's passage, and the first two Medicare beneficiary cards - owned and signed by President Harry and first lady Bess Truman. Officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services wanted to keep them. Larry DeWitt made sure they got only the pen. A civil servant for 29 years, DeWitt is the Social Security Administration's historian and is quite protective of his agency's collection of memorabilia, kept in a small, first-floor museum just around the corner from the main building's metal detector.

WASHINGTON -- With the fate of its leader uncertain, the Social Security Administration officially becomes an "independent" agency today, reporting directly to the White House.The change, to be marked at an afternoon ceremony at the agency's Woodlawn headquarters, removes half its personnel and more than half its budget from the Department of Health and Human Services.It also fulfills a long-held goal of many members of Congress who maintain that successive administrations have deprived Social Security of money and personnel and believe that the agency should have a higher profile to increase public confidence in the agency.

The Social Security Administration, facing a rising tide of disability applications and a backlog of more than 1 million cases, plans to shorten the time for processing a claim by two-thirds and reduce the number of people who handle it by the same amount.But the bureaucratic streamlining won't be quick or cheap.It will take six years and cost $148 million, much of that the expense of retraining the agency's work force. The agency says that it will save $852 million over the next seven years and another $300 million annually after that.

Abe Bortz, the Social Security Administration's first historian and a voracious book collector and reviewer, died Tuesday of lymphoma at his home in Pikesville. He was 93. Dr. Bortz grew up in Cincinnati, graduating from high school there in 1937 and earning a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Cincinnati in 1941. He was drafted into the Army the next year and served first as a lieutenant and then as a captain in the military-supply Quartermaster Corps. He saw Buchenwald, one of the German concentration camps, soon after the Army liberated it in 1945.

WASHINGTON -- Officials at the Woodlawn-based Social Security Administration informed employees they do not anticipate furloughs when across-the-board federal budget cuts go into effect, the union that represents many of those workers said Thursday. The announcement came days before $85 billion in budget cuts known as sequestration were expected to take effect on Friday -- cuts that the Obama administration has warned could lead to government-wide furloughs. Acting Social Security Administration commissioner Carolyn Colvin informed employees in a meeting on Thursday that furloughs would be avoided.

President Barack Obama is expected to soon nominate a new head of the Social Security Administration, replacing an incumbent appointed by his predecessor, George W. Bush, but the White House is mum on who should take the helm at the agency, which faces voluminous backlogs, potential insolvency and a raft of critics. Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue's six-year term expires Jan. 19. His successor must be confirmed by the Senate, in a process that Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, expects will take a couple of months from the hearings to a vote.

Your article states that Social Security worker Celisa Ford is "losing sleep and is stressed," fearful that she will have to pull her daughter out of college, because she has had a two-year pay freeze ("On the brink of the fiscal cliff," Dec. 6). I work in the private sector and have not had a pay raise in five years. I have a daughter who just left college and got married, a second in college, and one about to go next year. I am stressed too. Unlike Ms. Ford, I don't have time to take off work and whine in a picket line on North Greene Street.

With widespread budget cuts on the horizon, Social Security beneficiaries will soon get a preview of how customer service can be affected by a more austere federal government. Though the agency made no public announcement, the Woodlawn-based Social Security Administration told employees this month it will cut hours of operation at its 1,233 field offices for the second time in as many years. Nearly 180,000 people visit the offices every day to apply for Social Security cards as well as retirement and disability benefits.

Doris J. Spriggs, a former Social Security Administration specialist who later became an aide to six Baltimore mayors, died Tuesday of heart failure at Mercy Medical Center. The longtime Edmondson Village resident was 79. "Doris was really one of the characters at City Hall and was such a part of all of our work. She loved the city and loved what we were doing," said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. "As a volunteer, she put in more hours than the people who work there full time.

Dr. Michael Kevin Finegan, a retired Maryland General Hospital surgeon who also worked for the Social Security Administration, died of multiple myeloma Wednesday at the Brightwood Center in Lutherville. The Roland Park resident was 81. Born in Dublin, Ireland, he studied at boarding school, Newbridge College in Kildare, where he entertained thoughts of playing rugby professionally. He attended University College Dublin and received his medical education at the National University of Ireland, where he was a rugby team captain.

Rosalie D. Bonica, a retired Social Security Administration worker and a world traveler, died in her sleep April 14 at Oak Crest Village in Parkville. She was 101. Rosalie D. Macaluso was born and spent her early years in Calascibetta, Sicily, and arrived with her family at Ellis Island in New York in 1911. Her father, a coal miner, settled his family originally in Beaverdale, Pa., before moving to Dundalk in 1918. "She always said how grateful she was to her father, who had the foresight to bring them to this country where there were jobs and opportunity," said a daughter, Patricia M. Marani of Parkville.

Advocates for plain language have issued their first report card on how clearly federal agencies communicate with taxpayers and others - and the Social Security Administration has drawn a pair of C's. That put the Woodlawn-based administration in the middle of the dozen agencies assessed by the Center for Plain Language. The Washington-based organization promotes clear, easy-to-understand communication in government, business, nonprofits and academia. On the first anniversary of the Plain Writing Act, the center graded each agency this month on how well it has met the requirements of the law and how well it has followed the "spirit" of the legislation.

Sonya Reinhart, a longtime supervisor in the Social Security Administration's Office of Disability Operations who had been a child actress, died July 18 of a massive coronary at Sinai Hospital. The Owings Mills resident was 82. The daughter of a tailor and a homemaker, Sonya Benjamin was born in Baltimore and raised on North Avenue. When she was 3, Mrs. Reinhart, who could sing and dance, became a member of Uncle Jack's Kiddie Club, which performed at the Hippodrome Theatre.