The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved an investigation into cost overruns at mismanaged Veterans Affairs projects, including the medical complex in Aurora.
The inquiry was an amendment to the broader National Defense Authorization Act for the next fiscal year and
The $1.73 billion Aurora project, which for years has drawn the ire and scorn of Congress, has been the focus of several General Accountability Office inquiries that have shown blown budgets nearly each time.
The 13-building, 32-acre campus was to cost about $630 million, a figure that has fluctuated wildly over the years and recently came in at nearly three times those estimates.
VA projects in New Orleans, Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla., similarly have been far past approved budgets, but not nearly as much as the Aurora one.
GAO reports, however, have not drilled deeply into the cost overruns nor precisely pegged their cause. The senators want the GAO to find out where the money went, although the prior reports have not asserted any wrongdoing.
“As we continue to move forward with construction of the (Aurora) medical facility, we need more clarity and accountability on what went wrong, how and when,” Bennet said in a statement after the voice vote.
Added Gardner: “This amendment will help us discover how this project became a catastrophe and how we can prevent these problems from occurring on future projects.”
The Senate is expected to debate NDAA for a week or longer before it heads to the House.
Kiewit-Turner, the general contractor for the Aurora project, in December won a key court victory that allowed it to shutter the project because money was running out to pay it. The contractor successfully accused the government of knowingly insisting the design could be built for the original estimate when it could not, and of not offering a design that could be.
Congress last week approved temporary funding to $900 million and averted a costly shutdown.
The VA, which come up with a plan to fund the remaining $730 million before Congress will appropriate any additional funds.
David Migoya: 303-954-1506, dmigoya@denverpost.com or twitter.com/davidmigoya
