BREAKING | Rubio Introduces Legislation To Bring Greater Accountability To Veterans Affairs Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) today introduced the VA Management Accountability Act of 2014, a bill that would give Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Eric Shinseki and future VA secretaries complete authority to fire or demote VA Senior Executive Service (SES) or equivalent employees based on performance. The bill was introduced in the House today by House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Jeff Miller (R-FL). The bill is a response to reams of evidence indicating a widespread lack of accountability in the wake of the department’s stubborn disability benefits backlog and a mounting toll of at least 31 recent preventable veteran deaths at VA medical centers across the country. More than a dozen instances of this trend are documented on the VA Accountability Watch portion of the HVAC website. In each instance, VA SES executives who presided over mismanagement or negligence were more likely to receive a bonus or glowing performance review than any sort of punishment. Current law ostensibly allows SES workers, a group representing the bulk of VA’s senior leaders, to be disciplined and fired, but there are considerable amounts of red tape involved and the process can drag on for long periods of time. This bill gets rid of these hurdles in order to give the VA secretary authorities similar to those Members of Congress have to fire employees from their staffs. In Fiscal Year 2012, there were 448 career SES employees working at VA......
Posted on: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 23:23:12 +0000
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