WASHINGTON – Rep. Chris Jacobs has been in Congress for only two months, but already about 200 people have come calling or emailing to ask for the kind of help that they couldn't so easily get during the nine months when New York's 27th Congressional District went without representation in the House.
"The office had been completely shut down" after the October 2019 resignation of Rep. Chris Collins, said Jacobs, an Orchard Park Republican. "And so we did have a backlog."
To be specific, Jacobs came into office facing a to-do list from hundreds of constituents looking for their government stimulus checks, or lost Social Security checks, or help with a stalled claim for veterans benefits.
This is called constituent service, or case work. It's the little-noticed job of congressional staffers who use their boss's clout to make the federal bureaucracy work for average Americans.
People are also reading…
And Jacobs, like any member of Congress with an interest in winning another election, said he's putting a high priority on it.
"I think you impact people more so doing this sort of thing than some obscure piece of legislation in Washington," he said.
That's one of the few points of agreement between Jacobs and his Democratic rival in a June special election and again in November, former Grand Island Supervisor Nate McMurray.
Asked how a member of Congress should view constituent service, McMurray said: "It's half the job."
McMurray said he still meets residents of the 27th district who say they haven't been able to get help from Jacobs' office. Jacobs said he has hired two caseworkers and is in the process of hiring a third.
"They are very, very busy, both in terms of the backlog and just because of the times we're in," Jacobs said. "There's just a lot of constituent needs."
More than half of the constituent cases that Jacobs staffers have faced involve the Internal Revenue Service, the congressman said. Some of them involve people who didn't get the $1,200 government check promised under Covid-19 relief legislation, while others concern unpaid and overdue refunds. Already, Jacobs said, his office has been able to get $30,000 in money the IRS had back into the hands of district residents.
While Jacobs acknowledged his Clarence and Genesee offices are still playing catch-up, he said the situation could have been worse but for the fact that neighboring lawmakers such as Reps. Brian Higgins and Tom Reed pitched in to help residents of the 27th district when they didn't have a House member.
"They did help a lot and were very accommodating even to citizens who weren't from their district," Jacobs said.
Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat, said his office has long been helping Western New Yorkers from beyond the borders of his 26th Congressional District. Many people don't know where the local congressional district boundaries are, so Higgins said his office philosophy has always been to help any Western New Yorker who asks.
That happened more so than ever after Collins, a Republican who lived in Clarence, resigned and pleaded guilty to federal insider trading charges nearly a year ago. Hamburg's Hoover Beach isn't in Higgins' district, but he visited residents there amid flooding last fall and contacted the Army Corps of Engineers on their behalf regarding post-storm repairs.
Meanwhile, Higgins' staff addressed hundreds of concerns stemming from the pandemic from his district and beyond. Working from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. some days, Higgins' office said staffers helped more than 500 people get their unemployment checks in the first three months of the pandemic, and also helped more than 400 people get their stimulus checks. And the Higgins staffer who specializes in immigration issues worked to get Buffalonians back home after travel bans left them stranded overseas.
All of this is on top of the usual daily grind of constituent service work: lobbying to get veterans the medals they deserve, resolving Social Security disability claims and the like.
Five staffers handle such cases for Higgins, and most have been on his staff for many years.
"They're just so highly dedicated," Higgins said. "We always say we guarantee effort; we can't guarantee outcome. But the effort is extraordinary, and it's attributed to all of them."
Reed, a Republican from Corning with a vast district that sprawls across the Southern Tier and the Finger Lakes, appears to feel the same way about his three full-time and three part-time caseworkers. Reed dedicated a conference call with reporters to singing their praises earlier this month, noting they have tackled 3,000 cases so far this year.
"This is a testament to their commitment to the people of the 23rd congressional district," Reed said.
Noting that he is still in the process of assembling his staff, Jacobs said his office would have the same sort of commitment to residents of the 27th district.
"This is as important as anything else, and my allocation of staff and resources will represent that," he said.
