VA bonus winners sat on review boards

[maddezmom]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON — Nearly two dozen officials who received hefty performance bonuses last year at the Veterans Affairs Department also sat on the boards charged with recommending the payments.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press raise questions of conflicts of interest or appearances of conflicts in connection with the bonuses, some of which went to senior officials involved in crafting a budget that came up $1.3 billion short and jeopardized veterans' health care.

The documents show that 21 of 32 officials who were members of VA performance review boards received more than half a million dollars in payments themselves.

Among them: nearly a dozen senior officials who devised the flawed 2005 budget. Also rewarded was the deputy undersecretary for benefits, who manages a system with severe backlogs of veterans waiting for disability benefits.

Deputy undersecretaries who sit on the review boards, which are appointed by VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, also had input on bonus recommendations involving themselves, fellow members and spouses that made questionable performance claims and neglected agency problems.



Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/4807971.html

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:mad:

[aquart]

1. Criminals picking over our bones.

Fire them now.

[formercia]

2. Like I said before

a better term would have been Bounty, for every veteran denied disability or proper medical care.

It's all about reducing cost so the money can be paid to the contractors. The more the contractors spend to manage the facilities and provide health care, the less profit they make.

[question everything]

3. Why doesn't this surprise me?

Incompetency and shameless selfishness across the board.

I thought that the Reagan administration was the most corrupt one, but this one has long surpassed it.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. God. What have we become, really, that we allow one idiot to take over,

and then everyone else leads by committee?