Fedweek

The recommendations are politically charged - with final decisions having been steered to an outside commission. Image: mikeledray/Shutterstock.com

Senate Democratic leaders have said they will not hold confirmation hearings for nominees to form a commission to make final recommendations for closing or combining VA facilities, preventing the “Asset and Infrastructure Review,” or AIR, process from moving ahead.

The process was ordered by a 2017 law designed to address the VA’s longstanding issues with facilities that are underused, unused and/or past their service life by creating a process similar to that used several times to close or combine DoD facilities on similar grounds. Under that law, the commission is to report on its own recommendations by next January 31, to take effect unless blocked by Congress.

As a first step, the VA in March released its list of recommendations, which would result in the closing of several major facilities along with numerous smaller ones while opening others—with the stated intent to change both the agency’s physical footprint and its mission focus from those of the past to what it needs for the future.

However, the recommendations proved to be politically charged as expected — that was the main reason final decisions were steered to an outside commission — with objections from members of Congress in communities that would lose facilities as well as from federal employee unions representing VA workers. The largest of those, the AFGE, conducted a series of protests and announcements denouncing the process as a step toward privatization of veterans’ health care.

Veterans Affairs Committee chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont., and other Democratic leaders said that while they “share a commitment to expanding and strengthening modern VA infrastructure in a way that upholds our obligations to America’s veterans, we believe the recommendations put forth to the AIR Commission are not reflective of that goal, and would put veterans in both rural and urban areas at a disadvantage, which is why we are announcing that this process does not have our support and will not move forward.”

The top Republican on the panel, Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, said that “many of the VA’s facilities are empty, underutilized and severely outdated and that refusing to confirm commissioners amounts to “shutting down the work of the AIR Commission and possibly our only opportunity to fix this long-standing issue.”

Court Action Likely Means Continued Suspension of Vaccine Mandate for Months

Nine Hours on Hold: Pressure Builds on TSP to Improve Customer Service

4.6 Percent January Federal Pay Raise Advancing in Both House, Senate

TSP Responds to Customer Service Complaints

G Fund Now TSP Program’s Largest

Congress Prods OPM on Retirement Processing Delays, Again

Report Warns of ‘Hampered’ Security Protections in Federal Buildings

Vaccine Mandate for Federal Employees Not a ‘Coercion,’ Administration Asserts

See also,

Eligibility for FERS Retirement

Your Finances after Retiring from the Federal Government

Your Retirement: A Slope or a Cliff?

FERS Retirement Planning Bundle: 2022 FERS Guide & TSP Handbook