Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to express my concern that the Department of Veterans Affairs chose to issue performance bonuses to senior executives, including the director of the St. Paul Regional Office of the Veterans Benefits Administration, despite recent revelations of improper and dishonest conduct.
According to a report released by the VA's Office of the Inspector General in September, two VBA executives used their positions to assign themselves to different jobs that involve fewer responsibilities while maintaining their higher salaries. They actually assigned themselves to a different job where they had to work less and then kept their high salaries.
One of them was a woman named Kim Graves, the director of the Veterans Benefits Administration St. Paul Regional Office since October 2014. The inspector general found that Ms. Graves used her influence as director of the VBA's Eastern Area Office to compel the relocation of the previous St. Paul office director. So she moved that person and then moved herself into the job. She then proceeded to submit her own name for consideration and fill the vacancy that she had just created.
Taking on the job of directing the St. Paul Regional Office was actually a step down in responsibility for Ms. Graves. In the inspector general's words, she ``went from being responsible for oversight of 16 [regional offices] to being responsible for only 1 [regional office],'' but she kept her Senior Executive Service salary of $173,949 per year. She also received over $129,000 in relocation expenses.
In spite of this behavior, Ms. Graves received an $8,687 performance bonus this year. The St. Cloud VA health care system chief of staff, Susan Markstrom, received a performance bonus as well the same year she was reported with some mismanagement issues.
A chief of staff collecting bonuses while running off nurses and doctors and a senior executive using her position to push out one of her colleagues and give herself a plum assignment with fewer responsibilities but the same high salary are the kinds of actions that create a breach of trust. I am generally proud of Veterans Affairs. We obviously have issues in our health system with backlogs and other problems, but there are a lot of hard-working people who work in Veterans Affairs who should
be lauded for that work because our veterans deserve nothing but the best.
But in this case, I thank the inspector general for being willing to look into this difficult case and shedding light on what has been happening. The conduct is unacceptable and further erodes trust.
It is commendable that the VA inspector general took action by referring these two cases to the U.S. attorney for possible criminal prosecution. The VA needs to do right by our veterans and taxpayers by holding bad actors accountable and implementing reforms to prevent exploitation such as this from ever happening again.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
According to a report released by the VA's Office of the Inspector General in September, two VBA executives used their positions to assign themselves to different jobs that involve fewer responsibilities while maintaining their higher salaries. They actually assigned themselves to a different job where they had to work less and then kept their high salaries.
One of them was a woman named Kim Graves, the director of the Veterans Benefits Administration St. Paul Regional Office since October 2014. The inspector general found that Ms. Graves used her influence as director of the VBA's Eastern Area Office to compel the relocation of the previous St. Paul office director. So she moved that person and then moved herself into the job. She then proceeded to submit her own name for consideration and fill the vacancy that she had just created.
Taking on the job of directing the St. Paul Regional Office was actually a step down in responsibility for Ms. Graves. In the inspector general's words, she ``went from being responsible for oversight of 16 [regional offices] to being responsible for only 1 [regional office],'' but she kept her Senior Executive Service salary of $173,949 per year. She also received over $129,000 in relocation expenses.
In spite of this behavior, Ms. Graves received an $8,687 performance bonus this year. The St. Cloud VA health care system chief of staff, Susan Markstrom, received a performance bonus as well the same year she was reported with some mismanagement issues.
A chief of staff collecting bonuses while running off nurses and doctors and a senior executive using her position to push out one of her colleagues and give herself a plum assignment with fewer responsibilities but the same high salary are the kinds of actions that create a breach of trust. I am generally proud of Veterans Affairs. We obviously have issues in our health system with backlogs and other problems, but there are a lot of hard-working people who work in Veterans Affairs who should
be lauded for that work because our veterans deserve nothing but the best.
But in this case, I thank the inspector general for being willing to look into this difficult case and shedding light on what has been happening. The conduct is unacceptable and further erodes trust.
It is commendable that the VA inspector general took action by referring these two cases to the U.S. attorney for possible criminal prosecution. The VA needs to do right by our veterans and taxpayers by holding bad actors accountable and implementing reforms to prevent exploitation such as this from ever happening again.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
