Washington – The Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledged Tuesday that there are problems in its award of $3.8 million in bonuses to senior officials who have put health care at risk and said it would consider changes to avoid conflicts of interest and improve oversight.
Testifying before a House panel, VA Deputy Secretary Gordon Mansfield insisted the hefty awards were appropriate and necessary to retain hardworking VA employees. But he agreed the process might lack objectivity because members who sit on VA performance review boards – charged with recommending bonuses for top employees – all come from within the agency and typically get bonuses themselves.
Mansfield said VA Secretary Jim Nicholson would consider adding agency outsiders to the VA’s review boards.
Nearly a dozen senior officials received bonuses ranging up to $33,000 despite crafting a budget that came up $1.3 billion short by repeatedly failing to anticipate needs of growing numbers of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Also rewarded was the deputy undersecretary for benefits, who manages a system with severe backlogs of veterans waiting for disability benefits.
The current wait for veterans averages 177 days, nearly two months longer than the agency’s strategic goal of 125 days.
