Almost Half of All Appeals at DOHA Involve Financial Issues
As in previous years, financial issues rule the roost as the number one reason for a security clearance denial. The number of appeals heard by the Defense Office of Hearing and Appeals (DOHA) involving financial considerations alone makes up more 48% of all the cases submitted. Of those, DOHA upheld the denials of almost 82% of the appeals because the applicants failed to mitigate their financial issues. In my mind, if you get denied a clearance because of delinquent debts of failure to file or pay taxes, and you have not resolved the specific issues that got you denied in the first place, why would you spend time appealing? That was the case in most of the appeals where the denial was upheld.
For example, in this appeal the applicant had ten accounts that were delinquent for several years in the amount of over $10,000, which led to a denial by the DoD. In his appeal to DOHA, he still had not resolved the debts, and in fact, due to the loss of one of his jobs, was ending up in the negative each month. Why would he submit an appeal and expect a different outcome? In another case, the applicant failed to file multiple year tax returns and had over $24,000 in delinquent consumer debts. She was denied eligibility by the DoD and in her subsequent appeal to DOHA, and admitted she still had not resolved her taxes and other delinquent debts – denial upheld.
Why submit an appeal? Desperation, I suppose. Folks may feel their best (or only) chance to get a job is in the cleared space. May not make sense hoping for a positive outcome but it is their right to pursue it. Who knows maybe they are getting bad advice that they are paying too much for.
Kinda reminds me of an espionage case many years ago where a cleared contractor was trying to sell classified information. Unfortunately for this guy, he was talking to an undercover fed. He told the fed that he needed to raise money to clear up debts… so he could get a higher level of clearance.