The White House’s threatened veto of a bill that has passed the House to limit employee appeal rights at the VA has prompted the Senior Executives Association to question why the administration did not raise similar objections last year when a law was enacted that limited such rights of only senior executives there.
“While the Senior Executives Association opposes HR-1994 on many of the same grounds as the White House, we are amazed that this bill, which mirrors last year’s Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act, is only now causing alarm within the administration. In fact, the 2014 Act is a more draconian version of HR-1994, yet the administration had no issue then with whether the new legal removal authority and process affected the due process rights of career senior executives, who are not in any bargaining unit and therefore are not represented by unions,” a statement said.
For example, the administration’s statement pointed out that the bill, by shortening and limiting appeal rights, would cause a disparity between rights of VA employees and rights of employees of other agencies. “Clearly, there is already a disparity that was created when the 2014 statute passed whereby VA senior executives could be removed under the new draconian process but the rest of the workforce had the full set of pre and post removal process. Why did that disparity not matter to the administration then?” the group asked.
It noted that the 2014 law gives VA senior executives an even shorter period to appeal personnel actions than would be allowed department-wide under HR-1994.
“If the administration believes that HR 1994 encroaches on the due process rights of career federal workers at the VA, then it should also seek the repeal of the 2014 statute that imposes a far more draconian process on the career executive VA workforce,” it said.
