Senators In Colorado To Scrutinize Over-budget VA Hospital
AURORA, Colo. (AP) — Leaders of the U.S. Senate Veterans Affairs Committee toured the pricey VA hospital under construction in suburban Denver on Friday, asking why the project is more than $1 billion over budget.
The committee’s Republican chairman, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, and its top-ranking Democrat, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, were to hold a field hearing after their morning tour of the half-finished complex in Aurora.
Also attending will be Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Republican Rep. Mike Coffman, whose district includes the hospital. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican on the committee, also was attending.
Veterans Affairs Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson is among those scheduled to testify at the hearing. He was grilled by Coffman and other members of the House Veterans Affairs Committee at a hearing in Washington last week.
The hospital is expected to cost $1.73 billion, up from $630 million estimated last year. Equipping the hospital and training the staff are expected to cost an additional $340 million, bringing the total to more than $2 billion.
The VA has asked Congress for another $830 million to finish the complex. It wants to take the money from a $5 billion fund Congress approved to improve veterans’ access to care by building more facilities, hiring more medical professionals and improving efficiency.
Some lawmakers are refusing to go along with that plan, and some have asked whether the project should be scaled back.
Coffman and Gardner have proposed diverting the VA’s multimillion-dollar bonus budget to the Denver hospital until it’s complete.
Congress has been pressuring the VA to explain what went wrong and fire those responsible. Gibson has said one of the problems was a badly flawed planning process.
The VA launched an internal investigation this year, but it came under criticism because it began without an outside construction expert. An expert joined the panel this week but some witnesses had already been interviewed.
The VA has said its former head of construction retired one day after the internal investigators questioned him under oath, and three other officials have been transferred or demoted, but no one has been fired.
A whistleblower has said he was fired from his VA job after telling department executives the hospital couldn’t be built for the contract price.
The internal investigation will take into account separate reviews of VA construction problems by the Government Accountability Office and the Army Corps of Engineers, VA spokesman Paul Sherbo said Thursday.
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