Category: Veterans’ Affairs Department

We’ve discussed Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, two officials from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs who created vacancies in the Department and then used their positions to get the jobs and raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in relocation compensation for their efforts. Stars & Stripes reports that they have been disciplined but not the extent that a rational person might expect. They were merely demoted and they’re expected to report to their new jobs immediately;

“For those wondering whether VA is committed to real accountability for corrupt employees, VA leaders answered that question today with a resounding ‘no,’” said Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., who chairs the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.

“Rubens and Graves clearly should have been fired,” Miller said in a statement. “The fact that VA leaders refused to do so gives me no hope the department will do the right thing and take steps to recover the more than $400,000 taxpayer dollars Rubens and Graves fraudulently obtained.”

A committee staffer said the VA is not taking steps to recoup the relocation benefits and both executives will continue to earn well over $100,000 a year.

Yeah, well, the VA doesn’t exist for veterans, it’s a jobs program. While I’m sure that there are people out there who work for the VA and their focus is on making life better for veterans, the upper echelons of the SES mafia aren’t in the veterans business.

Thanks to Bobo and Richard for the link.

Bobo sends us a link to the Stars & Stripes which writes from a Washington Post article about the 2500 employees at the Veterans’ Affairs Department employees who were on paid administrative leave for at least a month last year.

The tab in salary for these absences — ranging from 30 days to more than a year for 46 employees — came to $23 million, according to a report provided to several congressional Republicans.

VA, responding earlier this year to requests from Congress to account for why so many federal workers linger on paid leave, often when they are accused of wrongdoing, said it was reviewing its policies on what is known as administrative leave.

You know, in this, the age of telecommuting, admin leave in the Federal government is almost unforgivable. Especially in an agency that has largely been on it’s ass as long as the VA. There are veterans standing in line for their benefits and for their healthcare and a couple of thousand VA employees would have a real impact on those numbers.

In my own experience, when I was disabled to the point that I couldn’t make it to work, I put in my eight hours-a-day at the computer for two years, still doing the work that I would have done in the office. We had another employee who was injured in an accident and spent a year in a nursing home recovering from the injuries with a laptop on on his chest, still working from his nursing home bed.

Illustrating what I’ve been writing for years; two Department of Veterans’ Affairs officials, Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, invoked the Fifth Amendment into their testimony before Congress. It seems that they forced VA employees to transfer to other jobs so the pair could step into their places and assume their lesser duties while keeping their own higher pay. In other words, the VA exists to enrich their employees, not care for veterans. From Fox News;

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., called the allegations against Rubens and Graves disturbing.

“VA exists for veterans, not for itself or the unjust enrichment of its senior employees,” he said.

Miller called on VA to take aggressive steps to root out actions identified by the inspector general’s report, hold employees accountable and “be better stewards of taxpayers’ money.”

[…]

Rubens and Graves kept their salaries of $181,497 and $173,949, respectively, even though the new positions they took as directors at regional offices in Philadelphia and St. Paul had less responsibility and a lower pay range than their previous positions.

Actually, it’s pretty common at the VA and it’s been going on for a long time. Now-Congresswoman Tammy DUckworth was an SES employee at the VA when she up and decided that she was going to college to get her Masters Degree full time while she was still being paid by the US taxpayers to make veterans her main concern, not just one veteran (herself). There’s a real culture problem at the VA that isn’t going to end without an extensive house-cleaning. Why else would a couple of women think that they could get away with feathering their own nests while veterans languish on line for the benefits that they’re owed for their lifetime of service.

Thanks to Chip for the link.

Tucson News Now reports that Army veteran Steven Cooper has filed a $50 million lawsuit against the Veterans’ Affairs Department because they didn’t diagnose his prostate cancer in a timely manner. By the time it was discovered, he was in stage 4;

The 44-year-old Valley veteran is convinced that his illness would not have become a death sentence, if only he had received basic medical care from Phoenix VA Medical Center.

Cooper’s attorney Gregory Patton filed the $50 million lawsuit against the VA for medical negligence, claiming that Cooper tried for more than a year to get an appointment at the hospital, and when he was finally examined, a nurse practitioner disregarded an abnormality in his prostate.

The lawsuit states that the nurse practitioner, “Did not order any further testing… refer Mr. Cooper to a urologist or schedule follow-up appointments.”

“She tells him that he’s fine and that there isn’t any required testing and isn’t anything to worry about,” said Patton. “He believes her – he trusts her – and unfortunately that cost him his life.”

While I sympathize with Mr. Cooper, if lawsuits are supposed to punish the defendants and to teach them to stop their bad behavior, I don’t think any number of lawsuits can change the culture at the VA. I think if there was an abnormality on any of my scans on my internal workings, I’d be riding herd on a number of medical professionals to find out what it meant. But, that’s me. I’m not sure how a $50 million lawsuit will help anyone except his girlfriend when Mr Cooper passes.

Thanks to Eggs for the link.

No. Really. The Stars & Stripes reports that Philadelphia VA Regional Office Director Diana Rubens and director of the St. Paul Veterans Affairs Regional Office Kimberly Graves profited nearly half-a-million bucks for their job relocations. Rubens got about $300k for moving from DC to Philly – about 140 miles.

Rubens took over the Philadelphia office in June 2014, VA officials said she was sent to clean up a regional office beset by problems including rodent-infested conditions, boxes of ignored mail that might have cost countless veterans their benefits, and a manager who asked employees to pay his wife to communicate with the dead at a party. However, the VA didn’t seek out Rubens. The report says that Rubens used her position as deputy undersecretary for field operations to transfer the former Philadelphia director and position herself to get the job.

Ya know what? They could have hired me to do it for half that price. And I would have personally beat every rat to death on YouTube. That’s probably not the solution they were looking for, but, I’m just sayin’….

Now, you take these two, the gala affairs that the VA paid for employees, the woman in Phoenix who spent six figures remodeling her own home with VA money and her VA employees’ labor – you have to wonder if the VA exists solely for the purpose of VA senior employees to improve their lives, you know, rather than veterans.

While thousands of veterans await their earned benefits, these senior executives don;t have to wait a minute to enrich themselves with taxpayer dollars. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

The report also recommended that the VA consider disciplinary action against VA Undersecretary for Benefits Allison Hickey and two deputy undersecretaries for their roles in Rubens’ move to Philadelphia. Hickey has said she handpicked Rubens for the job and has vehemently defended her in the face of growing public and Congressional scrutiny over Rubens’ moving expenses.

The problem, as I’ve said for years, can’t be handled by firing a few execs at the VA – they need to clean the whole house. It’s the culture at the VA and it’s existed for decades, not just since this administration came into office.

Thanks to Bobo for the link.