VA panel focuses on whistleblowers
Joe Davidson
The House committee that has focused on the cover-up of long wait times for service at veterans hospitals will turn its attention to the federal employees who turned back the covers, sometimes risking their careers to do so.
The House Veterans Affairs Committee, during a Tuesday evening hearing, will hear from whistleblowers who exposed the fraudulent practices that have become a national scandal.
This is another in a long series of hearings called by Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), who has been leading a probe into mismanagement at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Revelations prompted by whistleblowers and outrage from members of Congress and veterans led to the resignation of former secretary Eric Shinseki in May.
In testimony submitted to the committee, Katherine L. Mitchell, an internist at the VA hospital in Phoenix, described an agency suffering from an integrity deficit.
“Ethics have never been made an official VA performance measure, and thus do not appear to be a clear administrative goal,” she said. “There seems to be no perceived financial advantage to pursuing ethical conduct. Administrative repercussions are lacking for unethical behaviors that are so routinely practiced among senior executive service employees.”
Of course, federal employees should not need a financial incentive to engage in ethical conduct. But there were financial incentives, in the form of employee bonuses, that apparently encouraged workers to falsify records to meet productivity targets