[From article]
Deputy Inspector General Linda Halliday reported in September that two senior executives gamed VA’s moving-expense system for $400,000 in what she described as questionable reimbursements, with taxpayers paying $300,000 for one of them to relocate 140 miles, from the District to Philadelphia.
Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves “inappropriately used their positions of authority for personal and financial benefit when they participated personally and substantially in creating opportunities for their own transfers to positions they were interested in filling,” investigators found.
[. . .]
Rubens and Graves kept their salaries of $181,497 and $173,949, respectively, even though the new positions they took as directors of the Philadelphia and St. Paul, Minnesota, regional offices had less responsibility, overseeing a fraction of the employees at lower pay levels. Rubens had been deputy undersecretary for field operations.
Between salary increases and relocation expenses, the Veterans Benefits Administration, where they worked, 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.
http://www.stripes.com/news/veterans/lawmakers-probe-shockingly-unethical-misuse-of-funds-by-2-va-execs-1.373538
Lawmakers probe 'shockingly unethical misuse of funds' by 2 VA execs
By Lisa Rein
The Washington Post
Published: October 15, 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment