Free Republic

In the battle between bureaucrats and veterans, the Obama administration stands with the bureaucrats. Last week the White House threatened to veto the VA Accountability Act, a bill that would moderately streamline the process for firing incompetent Department of Veterans Affairs employees. Under the terms of the act, the VA secretary can’t place employees on paid administrative leave for more than 14 days per year, employees’ initial-hire probationary period is extended to 18 months, and terminated employees have seven days to file an appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board. But these streamlined termination provisions — which still provide far...

The government watchdog for the Department of Veterans Affairs reported Monday that it was able to substantiate claims that the VA's Los Angeles office was sending mail from veterans to the shredder. The VA's Office of Inspector General said it launched an "unannounced inspection" of the Los Angeles office after hearing allegations that the VA staff there was shredding mail related to veterans' disability compensation claims. Though the OIG said it can't measure how often this might have happened, it did say it found some examples of mail lined up for the shredder that instead should have been opened and...

The Office of Inspector General for Veterans Affairs just found staffers with the Los Angeles VA Regional Office improperly shredded numerous disability claims, tossing them in the trash rather than giving them proper review. ... The IG report also stated: “The shredding of these documents would have prevented the documents from becoming part of the veterans’ permanent record and potentially affect veterans’ benefits.” Examples of the documents that were shredded included disability-compensation claims submitted by two homeless veterans, and a letter from a medical provider confirming a veteran was unemployable due to “service-connected post-traumatic stress disorder,”