1. Provide Online Forms for Customers
2. Apply the Employer Rate to Exception Wages
3. Eliminate the Refund Waiting Period

I thought that making sure that suggestions got a fair hearing would be a proper function of the EAC, but other members preferred to refer them to the appropriate department for consideration, with no follow up. In other words, the EAC’s responsibility ended with the referral. All but one EAC member(besides me) held this peculiar opinion, leading me wonder if it wasn’t orchestrated by Anne, who met regularly with the EAC chairman and co-chairman.

My suggestion for providing online forms for customers was referred to Information Services, and the informal response was that IS would be providing online forms with ePASS. So far, none are available in the Forms section of the MERS website. In fact, the instruction at the top of the Forms page is “Please complete all forms in black ink.” The information from the  Membership Application must be provided online in ePASS, but the form still must be completed and sent in.

My suggestion for applying the employer rate to exception wages never got a formal response. It was referred to the Finance Department. On 7/30/03, I sent a memo to Anne, Luke Huelskamp and Tama Allen asking that the issue be considered soon, because it would impact ePASS. The same day, Anne sent me this email:

Steve,
Why was this proposal sent to the EAC?
Anne

My reply:

It was submitted as a "suggestion".

There was nothing further except Luke came to me one day and said he didn’t think we wanted to do that – no reason given.

My suggestion on eliminating the refund waiting period was referred to the Legal Department. There was some discussion of the issue via email, but I never got a face-to-face hearing and got no formal response.

I made another suggestion when I applied for my pension and discovered that MERS didn't trust me to provide the account and routing numbers for direct deposit of my check. That suggestion was rejected informally by Finance Director Luke Huelskamp. He said that to minimize disruption in setting up the EFT transfer and/or making corrections, the EFT authorization form should not be changed.  He said that there is more than one bank that has one account number for individuals and different digits at the end of the number, say, one for savings, another for checking, etc.   The individual doesn't always know that or even question it.  By speaking with a bank teller and the bank signing the form, the check should go to the correct account.  He felt it was only a one-time thing for individuals to have to deal with.

So. The IRS trusts taxpayers to provide their account and routing numbers, but MERS does not. MERS' convenience overrides the customer's.