Military.com | Sep
05, 2016 | by Rep. Jeff Miller
U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, a Republican from Chumuckla, Florida, is the chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.
 |
A
visitor leaves the Sacramento Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Rancho
Cordova, Calif., on April 2, 2015. Rich Pedroncelli/AP
In
an expletive-laden rant delivered earlier this year, a belligerent American Federation
of Government Employees President J. David Cox threatened
Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald with physical violence.
Cox
was "prepared to whoop Bob
McDonald's a--," he said. "He's going to start treating us as the
labor partner … or we will whoop his a--,
I promise you," Cox continued.
McDonald's
response? Absolutely nothing.
The
exchange perfectly encapsulates the corrosive influence government union bosses
are having on efforts to reform a broken VA. It's a never-ending cycle in which
pliant politicians and federal agency leaders bow to the bosses' demands to
preserve the dysfunctional status quo of our federal personnel system, which
almost guarantees employment for government bureaucrats no matter how egregious
their behavior.
The
problem with union bosses like Cox is that they are more interested in
protecting misbehaving VA employees than the veterans the department was
created to serve.
The
problem with VA leaders like McDonald is that, in their perpetual quest to
placate big labor's powers that be, the taxpayers and veterans they are charged
with serving are paying the price.
It's
no wonder McDonald was silent after Cox's violent threats. Cox's bellicose
behavior is precisely the type of employee conduct VA leaders and union bosses
routinely defend.
Take
the case of a VA Caribbean Healthcare System employee who AFGE helped to
keep her job after she participated in an armed robbery. Unwilling to admit the
crucial role AFGE union bosses played in helping the criminal keep her job, VA
has offered a series of outrageous excuses in order to explain her continued
employment. "There was never any indication that the employee posed a risk to
Veterans or VA property," VA Under Secretary for Health David Shulkin
said, adding that the employee couldn't be terminated for her armed robbery
participation because it occurred in her free time.
Really?
The
fact that AFGE routinely defends the indefensible among VA employees is not
surprising. After all, the organization's first loyalty is to government
workers above everyone else. What's disappointing, however, is VA leaders'
refusal to challenge AFGE and its tactics. VA's silence is more proof that the
bosses -- both VA and union -- are all part of the same system, which
specializes in protecting its own.
Consider
how VA safeguarded two senior bureaucrats when the department's inspector
general caught them orchestrating a scheme to rake in thousands in
taxpayer-funded relocation benefits.
According
to the IG, VA regional office directors Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves inappropriately used their authority,
enabling them to benefit from a total of more than $400,000 in taxpayer-funded relocation
payments. Rubens, alone, received more
than $274,000 in benefits to make the roughly three-hour move from Washington,
D.C., to Philadelphia. That's almost $100,000 per hour of driving.
When
alerted to Rubens' and Graves' conduct, VA's inspector general made criminal referrals to the Department of Justice,
while VA leaders went out of their way to allow them to keep their jobs, as
well as the benefits they collected as part of the scheme. VA Deputy Secretary
Sloan Gibson even expressed confidence in
the pair's leadership abilities and said keeping them on the payroll as
regional office directors was "the morally right thing to do."
For
VA and union bosses, however, it's about more than just protecting their own.
They are also actively fighting to protect VA's broken status quo.
Case
in point is the Veterans First Act,
a Senate bill that was ostensibly designed to address the department's number
one problem: its widespread and pervasive lack of accountability for
misbehaving employees.
AFGE
union bosses got their hands on an early draft of the legislation and demanded
that senators water down the bill in
four key areas. After senators made all of the changes the
union bosses had dictated, AFGE endorsed the bill.
Once
the union bosses gave the revised Veterans First Act their stamp of approval,
McDonald began rallying support for the legislation.
McDonald's sudden support for
the Veterans First Act marked a remarkable change of heart for him on the
subject of VA accountability. Previously, McDonald's VA had opposed almost every bill
that would have attempted to meaningfully help VA solve its accountability
problems. Perhaps McDonald only supports accountability reforms that union
bosses have had the chance to render toothless.
And
so it goes at VA, where union and VA bosses fight to maintain a system in which
corrupt and incompetent employees have more rights than the veterans they are
charged with serving.
Meanwhile
veterans and taxpayers are paying the price.
No comments:
Post a Comment