Earlier this month I told you about how The Department of Veterans Affairs reportedly paid out more than $142 million in performance bonuses in 2014 despite a string of scandals inside the agency.
The bonuses continued even after former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, who resigned last year amid the scandal over falsified wait-times, suspended certain bonuses. But that move only restricted bonuses for senior execs in the embattled Veterans Health Administration.
The VA continued to pay bonuses to other workers in other departments, including those facing their own controversies.
Now the AP is reporting this wonderful news:
The Department of Veterans Affairs will not try to recoup more than $400,000 from two senior VA executives who manipulated the hiring system to get their jobs of choice and received hundreds of thousands in extra money to relocate.
The most transparent administration evah has remained silent on questions about its decision to demote and transfer but not fire executives Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, and whether it would collect repayment of those relocation benefits.
Photo from disabledveterans.org
On Sept. 28, 2015, the VA Inspector General’s office issued a report finding that Rubens and Graves had “inappropriately used their positions of authority for personal and financial benefit” by arranging the transfer of subordinates whose jobs they wanted and then volunteering to fill the vacancies.
When asked about the determination by the Office of General Counsel and whether criminal charges would be referred against Rubens and Graves, the Office of Inspector General said, “We do not have information that is responsive to your questions,” and deferred questions of possible prosecution to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Neither that office nor the Department of Justice immediately responded to a query on the issue.
“This move is an insult to veterans and taxpayers, who are left footing the bill,” Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., who chairs the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, said in a statement Tuesday.
Curtis Kalin, spokesman for the nonprofit Citizens Against Government Waste, said the VA’s systemic problems “not only hurt taxpayers, but cost some veterans their lives.”
Read the all pathetic details here.
See also:
- Veterans still facing major medical delays at VA hospitals
- Seattle VA office lost records; veterans told benefits ending
- Obama’s VA shredded veterans’ disability claims
- Nearly One-Third Of 847,000 Vets With Pending Applications For VA Health Care Already Died
- Veterans’ bodies left to rot in L.A. morgue
- VA claims living veteran is dead, sends burial check, cuts benefits
- 179% increase in backlog of veterans disability claims under Obama
- Empty promise: Michelle Obama’s campaign to end veteran homelessness
- FBI launches criminal investigation into VA scandal; Senate passes bill to fix problem
- Phoenix VA hospital changed records to make patients who’d died waiting for treatment appear alive
- Veterans die while waiting for MONTHS to see a doctor at VA hospitals
- Vet Finally Gets VA Doctor’s Appointment – 2 Years After He Died
- Veterans facing long wait times to schedule doctor appointments
DCG