Examining the cases of 22 VA employees who were either promoted to senior executive jobs or moved to different positions over a three-year period, the inspector general said, it found a pattern of the Veterans Benefits Administration using the moves “as a method to justify annual salary increases”.
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The inspector general’s office has referred Graves and a VA official in the Philadelphia regional office to the U.S. Attorney for possible criminal charges.
The investigation concluded the VA could not reduce the executives’ salaries without cause despite their reduced responsibilities.
The report stops short of recommending any punishment for specific individuals but does recommend that the VA General Counsel review whether administrative action is warranted against numerous individuals involved with the programs and whether any of the ill-gotten funds can be recouped.
Top VA officials in Washington said Ms. Rubens was moving to Philadelphia to clean up the VA’s beleaguered regional office, which had been rocked by scandals including falsifying dates on veterans’ benefits claims, retaliating against whistleblowers, and a manager compelling subordinates to pay a medium at a party to communicate with the dead.
The IG said regulations allowed for the officials to keep their high salaries even though they took jobs that paid lower on the scale and decreased their responsibilities.
The Graves and Rubens cases will be considered for criminal prosecution.
“The IG’s report proves that VA’s corrosive culture extends to the highest levels of (Veterans Benefits Administration) leadership and must be immediately rooted out once and for all”, Miller said in the statement.
The inspector general had been investigating Philadelphia VA Regional Office Director Diana Rubens since March, after it became known that she received almost $300,000 in compensation to move about 140 miles from Washington to Philadelphia.
Between salary increases and relocation expenses, the VBA spent $1.8 million to reassign 23 senior executives from fiscal 2013 to fiscal 2015, investigators found. In all but two cases, the new jobs came with pay raises, despite a White House-imposed freeze on senior executives’ pay – and a widely-publicized ban on bonuses stemming from a backlog of outstanding claims for disability benefits. Graves also was paid more than $129,000 in expenses related to her move.
A spokesman for the VA said they’re cooperating with the inspector general and will re-examine “relocation and incentive procedures”. The report said she did so, in part, to be “closer to her mother”.
“It is clear that from day one VA officials were using the relocation expenses program to enrich themselves…The actions of the individuals uncovered by this report are a discredit to VA employees and veterans”.
According to investigators, Rubens used her previous position to create the vacancy by quietly working closely with Graves to arrange to transfer the then-Philadelphia director to fill a vacant position in Los Angeles.
“Our analysis of available evidence indicated two directors appear to have been inappropriately coerced to leave positions they were not interested in leaving to create vacancies for Ms. Rubens and Ms. Graves”, the IG report said.
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And for a few of the other transfers, the vacancies were not even announced before the relocation incentive was offered.
