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Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald, left, talks to House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2015, at the conclusion of the committee's hearing on the Veterans Health Administration.(Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP)
WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs doled out more than $142 million in bonuses to executives and employees for performance in 2014 even as scandals over veterans' health care and other issues<span style="color: Red;">*</span>racked the agency.
Among the recipients were claims processors in a Philadelphia benefits office that investigators dubbed the worst in the country last year. They received $300 to $900 each. Managers in Tomah, Wis., got $1,000 to $4,000, even though they oversaw the over-prescription of opiates to veterans – one of whom died.
The VA also rewarded executives who managed construction of a facility in Denver, a disastrous project years overdue and more than $1 billion over budget. They took home $4,000 to $8,000 each. And in St. Cloud, Minn., where an internal investigation report last year outlined mismanagement<span style="color: Red;">*</span>that led to mass resignations of health care<span style="color: Red;">*</span>providers, the chief of staff cited by investigators received a performance bonus of almost $4,000.
As one of his final acts last year before resigning, then-VA secretary Eric Shinseki announced he was suspending bonuses in the wake of revelations that VA employees falsified wait lists to meet wait-time targets<span style="color: Red;">*</span>—<span style="color: Red;">*</span>ostensibly as part of efforts to secure the extra pay. But he only curtailed them<span style="color: Red;">*</span>for a sliver of VA executives --<span style="color: Red;">*</span>those<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in senior levels of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the Veterans Health Administration, which<span style="color: Red;">*</span>oversees health care.
The agency has continued to pay performance-based bonuses to<span style="color: Red;">*</span>nearly half of agency<span style="color: Red;">*</span>employees,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>including<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in health administration, according to data provided to USA TODAY by the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>In all, some 156,000 executives,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>managers<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and employees received them for 2014 performance.
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VA spokesman James Hutton said the vast majority of agency employees are committed to serving veterans.
“VA will continue to review tools and options in order to ensure the department is able to attract and retain the best talent to serve our nation's veterans, while operating as a good steward of taxpayer funds,” Hutton said.
That’s not good enough for Florida Republican Rep. Jeff Miller, chairman of the House VA committee, which has been investigating questionable VA bonuses for years. Miller says the most recent awards reflect a “disturbing trend of rewarding employees who preside over corruption and incompetence.”
He noted the agency paid<span style="color: Red;">*</span>more than<span style="color: Red;">*</span>$380,000 in<span style="color: Red;">*</span>2013 performance bonuses to top officials at hospitals where veterans faced long delays in receiving treatment, including those under investigation for wait-time manipulation.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>“Rewarding failure only breeds more failure,” he said Tuesday. “Until VA leaders learn this important lesson and make a commitment to supporting real accountability at the department, efforts to reform VA are doomed to fail.”
USA TODAY
VA bonuses went to officials at delay-prone hospitals
Miller spearheaded – and the House passed – a measure last year that would have eliminated bonuses for VA senior executives for five years. But ultimately the House and Senate compromised on legislation that still allows the VA to hand out up to $360 million annually to executives,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>managers and<span style="color: Red;">*</span>employees.
Overall, the agency awarded $276 million<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in incentives<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in 2014, including retention and relocation payments, rewards for saving money on travel and coming up with inventive ideas, according to committee data.
The cash bonuses of $142.5 million were tied to performance reviews. Employees were eligible to receive the lump-sum<span style="color: Red;">*</span>payments for ratings of “fully successful” or higher. The payments ranged from $8 to as much as $12,705.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Most were<span style="color: Red;">*</span>more than $500. The<span style="color: Red;">*</span>average payout was $909.
Here are some of the recipients:
-- In Tomah, Wis., the former chief of staff of the VA<span style="color: Red;">*</span>medical center there, Dr. David Houlihan<span style="color: Red;">*</span>—<span style="color: Red;">*</span>whom veterans nicknamed the “Candy Man” because of his prolific prescribing of narcotics<span style="color: Red;">*</span>—<span style="color: Red;">*</span>received<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a $4,000 bonus in<span style="color: Red;">*</span>December. That was nine months after an inspector general<span style="color: Red;">*</span>investigation<span style="color: Red;">*</span>report<span style="color: Red;">*</span>concluded he was prescribing alarmingly high amounts of opiates. And it was four months after Marine Corps veteran Jason Simcakoski, 35, died of "mixed-drug toxicity"<span style="color: Red;">*</span>as an inpatient at Tomah after he was prescribed a fatal cocktail of medications, including opiates. The inpatient pharmacist supervisor also received a $1,050 bonus in December. A spokesman for the Tomah VA declined to comment. The VA moved last month to fire<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Houlihan. A lawyer who represented him did not respond to a message Tuesday seeking comment.
USA TODAY
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-- In Colorado, the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>flawed facility construction<span style="color: Red;">*</span>project<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in Denver was overseen in part by several VA officials headquartered in Washington. Among them were Stella Fiotes, executive director of the VA’s Office of Construction and Facilities Management, who received a $8,985 bonus; Dennis Milsten, an associate director in the same office, who got $8,069; and Chris Kyrgos, former national acquisitions director, who took home $3,800. VA spokesman Hutton did not address those awards beyond his general<span style="color: Red;">*</span>statement about the VA continually reviewing incentive options.
-- In St. Cloud, Minn., chief of staff Dr. Susan Markstrom got a $3,900 bonus in 2014. She was cited in an internal investigation report in January 2014 that concluded mismanagement led to mass resignations of health care providers at the facility. The report<span style="color: Red;">*</span>also<span style="color: Red;">*</span>said she and other leaders oversaw a work environment where employees were scared to report problems.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>St. Cloud VA spokesman Barry Venable said issues<span style="color: Red;">*</span>cited<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in the report<span style="color: Red;">*</span>were<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in 2013 and that Markstrom is “an excellent chief of staff" whose "ongoing contributions to patient care and safety are significant.”
-- In Augusta, Ga., VA financial manager Jed Fillingim was awarded a $900 performance bonus. He drew scrutiny from Congress last year after news reports revealed he admitted drinking and driving a government truck to a VA meeting in 2010 and a co-worker fell from the truck and was killed. Fillingim resigned from the VA after the incident but was rehired in March 2011, WRC-TV reported.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>A spokesman for the VA Medical Center in Augusta, Brian Rothwell, said Fillingim is not employed there.
-- In Arizona, Sandra Flint, now-former<span style="color: Red;">*</span>director of the Phoenix regional VA benefits office, received a bonus of $8,348. Irate veterans confronted Flint at a public forum in August 2014<span style="color: Red;">*</span>over a backlog of about 8,200 pending benefit claims.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Included were 3,667 pending longer than<span style="color: Red;">*</span>125 days.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>A spokeswoman at the office could not be reached for comment.
-- In St. Paul,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Minn., VA benefits office director Kimberly Graves received a bonus of $8,697 for 2014 performance. A VA inspector general report issued in September this year<span style="color: Red;">*</span>concluded Graves improperly used<span style="color: Red;">*</span>her<span style="color: Red;">*</span>authority to engineer a switch into her<span style="color: Red;">*</span>current post in October 2014. IG investigators concluded she also improperly received an additional $129,000 related to the move. Graves pleaded the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions at a House VA Committee hearing last week.
Department of Veterans Affairs St. Paul Regional Office Director Kimberly Graves listens at a Veterans Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, Nov. 2, 2015. Graves asserted her Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution to protect herself against self-incrimination.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Molly Riley, AP)
Hutton, the national VA spokesman, underscored that no top senior executives in the Veterans Health Administration received bonuses.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>“The issues raised in your questions focus on challenges VA has faced in the past,” he said. “(T)he department is working diligently to plan a foundation for the future that will modernize VA’s culture, processes, and capabilities to put the needs, expectations and interests of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>veterans and their families first.”
Miller said the agency, if it hands out bonuses at all, should<span style="color: Red;">*</span>do more to ensure<span style="color: Red;">*</span>they don’t reward the wrong behavior.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>He also wants the agency to take back bonuses deemed inappropriate<span style="color: Red;">*</span>after they are awarded.
“VA loves to tout its bonus program as a way to attract and retain the best and brightest employees,” he said. “Unfortunately, often times the employees VA rewards with thousands in taxpayer-funded bonuses are not the type of people the department should be interested in attracting or retaining.”
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