For about three years in the late 1970s my brother Hugh was an administrative law judge for the state’s Social Services Department, a “Welfare Hearing Officer.” His job basically entailed driving around northern California’s rural counties to hear welfare denial appeals (where an applicant would appeal a county’s denial of welfare; in those days denial on petty, and illegal, grounds was common).
Hugh had graduated UC Davis law school in 1974 near the top of his class, passed the bar with the third highest grade in bar exam history at the time, and had spent a few years in the State Legislative Counsel’s Office as a staff attorney working on proposed state laws and writing opinions for state legislators.
As a traveling hearing officer/law judge, Hugh lived in Sacramento but spent much of his time on the road. I went to visit him once between his welfare judge road trips. He showed me the pile of paperwork for one of his cases. As it turned out, it was a case that would affect him and his view of welfare for the rest of his life.
Hugh told me that more than 90% of the time he found in favor of the appellants, and that the counties had not followed the law in denying welfare or in demanding that overpayments be paid back. In fact, he said, the appellants were frequently advised by line workers to file appeals because they didn’t like their own local bosses’ overly strict interpretation of the welfare laws, knowing that appeals would be successful, but not wanting to go against their penny-pinching supervisors, preferring to let the traveling judge tell them they were wrong.
This one case he showed me involved an elderly lady who lived in a trailer behind her son-in-law’s house down a remote dirt road. Apparently, the lady was grouchy and the son-in-law (allegedly) wanted her gone, or perhaps even dead (or so the lady claimed), so he could inherit her meager estate. Somehow the elderly lady had appealed a denial of increased benefits that had been originally filed by her son-in-law who had gotten himself appointed her legal guardian and to whom her welfare checks were mailed. The son-in-law was supposed to “caretake” the old lady, but instead he was making her life miserable by keeping her welfare money and withholding basic necessities like toilet paper and decent food. She didn’t have a vehicle and was dependent on the son-in-law for her living. Among other sadisms, the son-in-law allowed his pigs to trample and destroy the old lady’s little garden.
Of course, Hugh didn’t know any of this at first. But he suspected something was wrong as he read the file. So on his way to the hearing at the County seat (I forget what County it was, Plumas? Glenn? Not Mendo) the day before the hearing he went out to visit the old lady to interview her.
Hugh liked her immediately. She told him about her situation, which Hugh sympathized with, but most of her difficulties were outside the scope of welfare law, of course.
Hugh found in favor of the old lady (and her terrible son-in-law), but he knew her problem was much deeper than his findings which were limited even under generous interpretations.
Over time, he made it a point to stay in touch with the lady and stopped by to see her when he could. He found a friendly local Sheriff’s deputy who Hugh convinced to stop by periodically to check on things in the last few months of her life. Hugh sent money out of his pocket to the deputy for the old lady's basics.
Via this case, and a few others like it, Hugh came to believe that welfare law was not only badly administered, but that “welfare” didn’t come close to providing much actual welfare; the meager handouts helped a little, but most recipients were still dirt poor and struggling and he took some individual cases personally so that it became hard for Hugh to deal with them dispassionately and bureaucratically.
He soon became disenchanted with the hearing officer job and quit to take a position at the California Rural Legal Assistance office in Delano (a real armpit of a place in the south-central Valley), mostly helping farmworkers with their legal problems and documents.
(He would later become disenchanted with this job too, for entirely different reasons — a story for another time.)
Many years later Hugh found himself drawn back to welfare work when, after years on the road, mostly overseas and in Mexico, he returned to Mendocino County to help our aging parents. He plunged all the way back through the looking glass, going to work as a Mendocino County welfare eligibility worker.
After a few years of that he was promoted to the County’s point person for welfare appeals (among other duties) — on the County's side, ironically. I don’t know how many of his co-workers knew about his prior experience as a welfare hearing officer all those years earlier. Apparently, much of this activity for the County involved explaining the law to staff and welfare fraud cops before appeals were even brought to a state hearing officer.
It was my impression that Hugh used his prior experience to make sure welfare benefits were fairly and legally dispensed so that, at least in Mendocino County, the appeals rate went down and the eligibility workers he dealt with were more grounded in the correct interpretation of the rules and the associated case law and court rulings, which Hugh made a point of following closely. Being an experienced (but non-practicing) welfare lawyer, he was in the unique position of understanding the legalese involved (especially in complex welfare case law) and explaining it to his co-workers.
To say that Hugh Scaramella was “overqualified” for his job in Mendocino County would be a significant understatement.
I remember meeting Hugh. Impressive guy.