{"id":32213,"date":"2012-10-01T18:54:47","date_gmt":"2012-10-01T22:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32213"},"modified":"2012-10-01T18:54:47","modified_gmt":"2012-10-01T22:54:47","slug":"va-wastes-6m-on-two-training-conferences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32213","title":{"rendered":"VA wastes $6m on two training conferences"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know there are several of you waiting for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to rule on your benefits. You’ll be happy to know that they’re hard at wok spending that money you should have received months ago on a couple of training conferences according to Stars & Stripes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

About 1,800 VA employees attended the two professional development conferences, held in July and August 2011. Investigators said the conferences appeared to be legitimate training opportunities, but noted that senior leaders \u201caccepted little responsibility for financial stewardship\u201d in spending more than $6 million for the two events.<\/p>\n

Among the more egregious expenses were $50,000 for a conference video parodying the move \u201cPatton,\u201d $98,000 for promotional items such as tote bags and thumb drives, $37,000 for questionable travel expenses for VA employees and $43,000 in extra pay for staff running the events.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But, oh, don’t worry, the guy, Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Administration John Sepulveda, who was responsible has resigned and two more employees are on administrative leave during the investigation. And the Secretary is sorry they got caught splurging on the two events;<\/p>\n

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki announced he will appoint a panel of senior officials to review the case and recommend appropriate administrative action against other employees involved in the conference planning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, how about getting back that six million bucks for the veterans who deserve it more than a bunch of pampered bureaucrats, there, Eric.<\/p>\n

Investigators also said that Sepulveda told them under oath that he had no prior knowledge of some of the expenses, including the costly \u201cPatton\u201d video produced by an outside contractor. Other VA employees contradicted that, saying he not only viewed the video but even suggested changes to it just days before the first conference.<\/p>\n

Department of Justice officials have declined to prosecute Sepulveda for perjury, investigators said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, let’s not screw up someone’s life over something so trivial. You know, like veterans’ lives are screwed up by the mismanagement of funds. But we’re supposed to believe that they’ve scrubbed the phonies from their rolls<\/a>, because just because they lie to investigators and cover up for it, they’d never lie to the public or Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know there are several of you waiting for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to rule … VA wastes $6m on two training conferences<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}