WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs by next week should turn over a study it completed and then shelved before scaling back plans for a new hospital at the Fitzsimons campus, Sen. Ken Salazar said Wednesday.
The study looking at the hospital as originally planned was discussed within the VA but never released, Salazar said. The agency never told Colorado’s congressional delegation, veterans groups or officials in Colorado that it existed, he added.
Withholding that critical information is “inexcusable,” Salazar said.
“It’s highly questionable for the VA to spend $4 million of taxpayer money, apparently willfully withhold these plans from Colorado’s veterans and congressional delegation and then try to sell us a scaled down version of the project,” said Ed Perl mutter, the Golden Democrat in whose district the hospital would be located.
The shelved study is the latest twist in the saga of the planned $621 million complex in Aurora, which originally was supposed to treat 424,000 veterans.
The VA did not respond to multiple reporter inquiries, including a list of submitted questions, on Wednesday.
Plans for a new veterans hospital at Fitzsimons date back more than a decade.
After Jim Nicholson stepped down as VA secretary in November, Salazar said, the agency began shifting its Fitzsimons plans.
“What I have gathered is that the VA made a dramatic change in policy direction,” Salazar said. The Bush administration, he said, “has been asking the VA to cut down on what kind of money they’re investing in health care facilities for veterans”
Salazar said he spoke Monday with VA Secretary Dr. James Peake and that “I told him I wanted to have this information delivered to us.”
Sen. Wayne Allard, a Loveland Republican, plans to meet with Peake today, Allard spokesman Steve Wymer said. Allard thinks some of the proposals in the VA’s new plan for the hospital could be beneficial, Wymer said.
Anne C. Mulkern: 202-662-8907 or amulkern@denverpost.com
