Two senators active in government oversight issues have urged the Trump transition team to ratchet up pressure on the VA to hold its employees at all levels more accountable.
“We believe the vast majority of VA employees are dedicated and hard-working civil servants. However, the current administration has shown that it is either unwilling or unable to hold employees accountable for wrongful conduct. The failure to hold officials accountable poisons the entire workforce,” Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron. Johnson, R-Wis., wrote.
They suggested that the new administration reverse the Obama administration’s decision to not use streamlined disciplinary authority enacted in 2014 for SES members there, a decision flowing from a Justice Department determination that the law would not stand up to a lawsuit challenging it as violating due process rights.
“In addition, current VA leadership has vigorously opposed congressional efforts to enact additional accountability measures on non-senior executive VA employees. Moving forward, we encourage the new VA secretary to not only use the tools Congress has already provided the department to hold bad-acting and underperforming VA senior executives accountable, but also work with Congress to enact additional accountability measures for all VA employees,” they wrote.
They added that the VA “has a cultural problem with whistleblower retaliation,” noting that in 2015, the Office of Special Counsel received nearly 2,200 complaints of reprisal from VA employees while the department with the second-highest number, Defense with about 1,300, has twice as many employees. “All too often, it is the whistleblower who faces punishment while retaliating managers avoid any culpability for their actions,” they wrote.
