The ‘Corrosive Culture’ at Veterans Affairs

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-corrosive-culture-at-veterans-affairs [login to see]

When Congress enacted the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act of 2014 in the wake of revelations about bureaucratic dysfunction at the Veterans Affairs Department, the plan was to reduce wait times at VA hospitals, give veterans access to outside health care and allow the VA to quickly terminate problem employees.

How is the VA doing? For starters, government statistics show that hospital wait times are 50% longer than two years ago.

Trying to increase access to outside care also isn’t working. That’s no surprise. The law allows veterans to see outside doctors, but only for 60 days. Then it’s back to the VA queue. Congress is considering a bill that would undo time limits on outside care.

What about the law’s third aim, to address the VA’s chronic lack of accountability in the past? The law allows the firing of top-level VA officials with less notice and fewer appellate rights than government employees enjoy. The fired VA worker must appeal within seven days of the discipline; administrative judges must hear and decide the case within 21 days, or the department’s discipline stands; judges cannot mitigate penalties; and decisions are final. But that plan, too, has backfired. Judges instead appear to be more inclined to side with misbehaving VA officials.

Over the past month alone, judges at the Merit Systems Protection Board, which hears appeals by federal employees, sided with three VA officials who challenged their disciplining. The MSPB reinstated all three. In each case the misconduct was severe.

One case involved the VA’s termination of a senior employee, Linda Weiss, for ignoring numerous complaints about an abusive nurse assistant. The judge agreed that the nurse assistant was abusive and the supervisor’s disregard was serious. But the judge ordered the supervisor’s reinstatement; he would have opted for mitigation, the judge said, but that’s not allowed under the 2014 law.

The other two cases involved VA officials, Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, who created positions with less work and more pay. They moved themselves into the positions and then billed the department a total of nearly $400,000 in relocation costs. The VA inspector general, investigating the matter, found in September 2015 that a “corrosive culture” existed at the highest levels of the department. VA officials, he said, were “helping themselves instead of helping veterans.”

Termination was probably supportable in both cases, but the VA instead merely sought to reclassify the employees’ titles, to reflect their scaled-back responsibilities and to reduce their pay accordingly. The judge said no. Why? Because others involved weren’t also punished. Apparently the VA can’t remove bad apples one at a time.

The MSPB’s rulings in these cases might have been dubious, but the board has raised valid complaints about the procedures. The 21-day window for hearing and deciding cases does seem too brief. Also, what’s the harm in allowing judges to mitigate penalties? According to the MSPB’s last four annual reports, judges in VA cases modify or mitigate disciplinary action only about 5% of the time. In the past, the board typically supported the VA’s penalties.

Allowing more time to hear and decide cases, and granting judges the ability to adjust disciplinary actions, could be a significant benefit to a Veterans Affairs Department that so far has shown little sign of improvement. Meaningful reform must be balanced.