A House bill (HR-571) would boost whistleblower protections for VA employees while adding provisions designed to increase accountability of management officials who retaliate against them.
The bill by Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., head of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, is the latest in a long series of proposals arising out of the VA patient care and scheduling scandal, and comes at a time when the Office of Special Counsel is continuing to investigate alleged reprisals against dozens of employees who made initial disclosures or cooperated with investigations into the scandal.
The bill would establish a new system employees could use to report retaliation claims that emphasizes addressing problems at the lowest level possible. Supervisors would be required to report all retaliation claims to facility directors, “eliminating the possibility for facility leaders to claim plausible deniability of such claims,” Miller said.
It also would codify prohibitions against negative personnel actions for employees who file whistleblower complaints or who cooperate with congressional, GAO or IG investigations; establish mandatory disciplinary penalties for employees found to have engaged in retaliation against whistleblowers; and require whistleblower protection training program for all VA employees.
Miller said on introducing the bill that “the department still has much more work to do when it comes to fully addressing this issue. This problem went unchecked at VA for years, and it would be naïve to think it would simply vanish upon the appointment of a new secretary and in the absence of the thorough housecleaning the department so desperately needs. VA’s transformation won’t be complete until employees at all levels understand there are tangible consequences for retaliating against whistleblowers.”
