IG: Amounts awarded “were determined without considering what was needed for retention,” there was no consideration of market factors. Image: EndeavorMoorePhotography/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffSome VA executives received bonuses exceeding $100,000 out of money meant to help the VA recruit and retain employees in high-demand occupations, says an inspector general report.
The report said that about nine-tenths of the $255 million for “critical skills” incentives—part of the 2022 “PACT Act” expansion of benefits to veterans who had been exposed to military burn pits—paid out starting in early 2023 went to some 29,000 employees in intended occupations such as HR specialists, housekeeping aids, police and medical supply technicians. However, nearly $11 million was paid to about 170 senior executives at the VA’s headquarters, averaging more than $59,000 each—including seven who received more than $100,000—and nearly $10 million went to some 200 field senior executives, averaging more than $50,000 each, the report said.
While initially disclosing last fall the payments to executives—causing an uproar among veterans’ organizations and Capitol Hill leaders on veterans’ issues—the VA also canceled the awards to the central office executives (although not those to the field office executives) and began recouping the payments and requested the IG review.
The IG found that the payments were approved despite some internal opposition—including one official who said at the time that he did not “like the optics of paying execs, because it will add up to a number the public / Congress will question.” The IG found that the payments were “inconsistent” with the intent of the PACT Act, saying that “evidence suggests” that approving officials “based them first on achieving a desired outcome—incentive awards of 20 or 25 percent of basic pay for all—and then took steps weeks or months later to justify the awards with data.”
Problems the report cited included that: the amounts awarded “were determined without considering what was needed for retention,” there was no consideration of market factors that might merit the payments; and internal controls and oversight were lacking.
The VA generally concurred with the IG’s recommendations to tighten controls and to take “whatever administrative actions, if any,” against personnel involved.
House Veterans Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., said his committee will continue pressing on the issue, saying that “we have consistently heard from VA police officers, medical supply technicians, housekeepers, and other VA staff about the need for VA to better retain quality employees. Instead of using all of the critical skill incentives to do this, VA inappropriately used the money to line the pockets of VA executives to the detriment of VA’s workforce and the veterans they serve.”
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