AURORA – The first inquiries into what went wrong with a vastly overbudget veterans medical center outside Denver could be done soon, VA Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson said Wednesday.
An Army Corps of Engineers review of the troubled project should wrap up in the next few weeks, Gibson said during a visit to the construction site in suburban Aurora.
An internal Veterans Affairs Department investigation into possible employee misconduct might already be finished, but the results won’t be made public until after any disciplinary action is taken, Gibson said.
He hinted that some members of Congress who are calling for firings might be disappointed.
“We’re going to go where the evidence leads, and we’re going to do the right thing, and that may not be the popular thing,” he said.
The half-finished medical center is now expected to cost up to $1.73 billion, nearly triple the estimate the VA gave last year.
Construction is continuing under a series of short-term funding deals in Congress while the department negotiates with lawmakers for enough money to finish the facility.
The VA says it needs another $625 million for a scaled-back version of the medical center. Gibson said he still believes the best solution is a 1 percent spending cut across the department in the next fiscal year. Veterans benefits wouldn’t be affected.
Gibson said the VA is providing Congress with detailed information on the proposal, but he expressed some frustration with the talks, calling them one-sided.
“We offer up an idea and (Congress says) ‘No, that’s not really what we have in mind,”’ he said.
Gibson repeated his prediction that the overruns will be blamed on late changes in the contracting process.
He said the retirement of VA acting Inspector General Richard J. Griffin, announced earlier Wednesday, had nothing to do with the problems at the Denver hospital.
Griffin led the investigation into long wait times at the Phoenix VA hospital that led to the resignation of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. Some lawmakers and whistle-blowers said Griffin didn’t do enough to hold VA leaders accountable.
