That action the Central Alabama VA director took to terminate employees for falsifying wait list records? It never happened. It wasnt true. No one has been fired. That means employees responsible for falsifying wait list records are still working at the VA in Alabama. If a Member of Congress can’t get a straight answer from the VA, just think what our veterans go through on a daily basis. This is a long post, but bear with me because its important. Last week, in a meeting he requested, CAVHCS Director James Talton made it clear to me and my District Director that those responsible for falsifying wait list records in Central Alabama were no longer working at the VA, due in part to action he took to remove them. My office made multiple attempts to verify the terminations, including an inquiry to Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson. Eventually, Talton acknowledged to me over the phone that no terminations in fact took place. He apologized for what he called a ‘misunderstanding over him repeatedly saying employees had been relieved of their duties.’ However, the unmistakable tenor of Friday’s conversation and his failure to correct the record after three days of saturating news coverage tell me this wasn’t a misunderstanding at all. I believe I was misled. This kind of cover-your-own-back mentality is precisely the problem at the VA. Remember that the issue at hand is the falsification of records to hide poor performance. For Director Talton to give the false impression that appropriate action had been taken when it actually had not is emblematic of the backward priorities within the VA bureaucracy. This breach of trust has caused my office to dig even deeper into what is really going on in Montgomery. I believe there is more to this story.
Posted on: Wed, 11 Jun 2014 15:28:46 +0000
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