Excuses offered by Department of Veterans Affairs for paying employees to stay at home for years are “largely vague, incomplete, or incoherent,” the Senate’s top watchdog says in a new letter to the troubled agency made public Monday.
The Dec. 30 letter by Sen. Chuck Grassley was prompted by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s reports that VA placed a nurse’s aide awaiting a manslaughter trial on paid leave for just under two years, then returned him to work before a two-year leave threshold. They did so to avoid having to report to the Iowa Republican at a later date.
“The VA should provide a full account of the circumstances surrounding this incident,” especially the use of “administrative leave,” where the government pays an employee not to work for an indefinite period, Grassley told VA in his letter.
The nurse’s aide is charged with beating an elderly patient to death. Prosecutors say they have plenty of evidence, but the VA claims he did nothing wrong. (RELATED: VA Nurse Still On Payroll Despite Charge He Beat 70-Year-Old Vet To Death)
Grassley, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said administrative leave is supposed to be used only in rare cases where the employee would pose a danger to the workplace. Officials at VA, however, used it to create the illusion that they are punishing employees, when in fact they are getting paid not to do their jobs, Grassley said. (RELATED: Feds Return Nurse Accused Of Manslaughter To Work)
If they did something wrong, they should be suspended without pay, and if bosses are unsure, but have no reason to suspect imminent danger, employees should continue to work while action is taken, he said.
In the case of the nurse’s aide, the VA first told TheDCNF that policy required the aide to be paid to stay home through his trial. Then, days before the two year mark, and well before the trial, the agency violated its stated policy to return the aide to work. Officials refused to explain the reason for the change.
Grassley asked VA Secretary Bob McDonald “why the seriousness of the issues necessitated administrative leave for over one year, but were insufficient to support an indefinite suspension.”
Many federal agencies have not reconciled their use of paid leave with the Office of Personnel Management’s official rules for its use. The OPM rules specify that paid administrative leave is only to be used in well-defined rare circumstances for short periods.
Grassley first asked VA to justify its paying employees not to work in 2014. The agency’s response was “largely vague, incomplete, or incoherent,” he wrote. Grassley asked again in October 2015 and got no response at all from VA.
After a scandal in Phoenix that forced McDonald’s predecessor at VA to resign, the agency put two of the hospital’s top administrators on paid leave while telling Congress that it had taken action.
Agency officials said they were doing an “investigation,” but it took months to complete. Congress was then told that VA was doing nothing because prosecutors told them to wait. In fact, federal prosecutors had not given such an order.
Finally, the VA returned the two Phoenix executives to their jobs after more than a year without taking any action against them. In the meantime, the two collected salaries of nearly $200,000 each without working, and VA never said what specific investigative steps it took or why they couldn’t fire them.
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