Shit I’ll call him for you and pretend to be someone important. April case should not be waiting still.
This is exceptionally bad advice on several different levels: 1. John Fitzpatrick is the Policy Director of the PEB. I have known him for 15 years- including when he was a Marine 0-6 board member and was one of the most pro-service member panelists during his time there. He has been working long hours for the past several months to bring additional staff on board, train them, and seek exceptions to policy from the ASEC to eliminate the backlog. 2. Posting his number publicly is likely to result in many individuals on this forum calling and distracting him from the task at hand- reducing the backlog. 3. In exceptional cases, it is reasonable to have Command POC reach out to him, but you are more well-advised to have your MEB counsel initially do so via email as it is often easier for him to reply that way in a timely manner. 4. While this is a free and open forum, it is associated with Jason Perry as its founder and this suggestion has the potential to cause disruption of John Fitzpatrick's workload that will cost Jason some of the goodwill that he has built up over the past decade with the Navy PEB. Thus, if you value Jason and this forum, you will recognize the potential for harm caused by your recommendation and remove this post. Summary- this advice is based upon 30+ years of representing clients in this system and doing it well, as Jason will confirm. This is very bad advice and members of this forum would be ill-advised to follow it.
Shouldn't be long now for you. Mine was sent May 27th and accepted June 11th and I signed my findings last Monday
If service members could be kept up to date with ANY information regarding their packages, they would not have to resort to this kind of action. That is what the people here are asking for. The unknown is what is driving everyone crazy. The coronavirus excuse is far gone, and the manpower excuse is stale. The Army and Airforce can turn around packages in a week. Looks like John should work harder. I know when the job isn't done in fleet commands, they work 12 on and 12 off, hopefully John is doing the same.
The Army can turn around IPEB decisions quickly, but you should be aware that they are now scheduling formal hearings for April, May, and June of next year for people who request a formal hearings- this is as of the past three weeks. They have hit a backlog, but it is at the FPEB level. Regular Air Force cases are processing well on the IPEB level, but Guard and Reserve cases are stagnating at that level right now. And, another reason why Air Force cases move faster is that they have eliminated the SAFPC level of appeal, a post-FPEB level of appeal still afforded to Army, Navy, and Coast Guard members. Thus, there are trade-offs. With the Navy PEB, it has been a staffing issue- they had a shortage of medical officers and were the only DOD branch that did not hire civilian adjudicators- retired medical and line officers- to avoid such issues. That is changing now, thanks to John Fitzpatrick, and the first civilian adjudicator has been brought on board. Hopefully, more will follow. Note- members in all DOD branches should also expect delays next spring and summer as PEB members will likely be tasked with collateral duties as Discharge Review Board members to deal with the current Army class settlement as well as the pending Navy class action settlement. The Air Force is starting to get immersed in this litigation too. These decisions will afford an avenue of relief to tens of thousands of veterans who were unjustly given general or OTH discharge. However, you should expect that PEB members will be detailed to many of these cases as the various Discharge Review Boards just do not have the personnel to process the number of appeals that are expected within the next year. It was never a COVID issue with the Navy PEB or its supervisory agency- the CORB- it was a manpower issue. The same was true of the Coast Guard PDES process for many months, but that is being slowly resolved too.
Thank you for the information, it's nice to see what is actually going on behind the scenes. I wish this kind of information was disseminated more frequently.
Can't you just have your iPAC or admin shop contact them? It should be fairly easy, but I know how some admin's can be. Good luck!
I'm assuming that I don't have anyone contact them until my EAS is actually changed, so I'm just still waiting for that. and thank you!
