{"id":89137,"date":"2017-06-16T07:57:51","date_gmt":"2017-06-16T12:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=89137"},"modified":"2017-06-16T07:57:51","modified_gmt":"2017-06-16T12:57:51","slug":"latta-votes-for-va-reform-legislation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2017\/06\/16\/latta-votes-for-va-reform-legislation\/","title":{"rendered":"Latta votes for VA reform legislation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Submitted information<\/em><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON, D.C.\u00a0— U.S. Representative Bob Latta (R-Bowling Green) has joined his colleagues in passing\u00a0S. 1094<\/a>, the bipartisan Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)\u00a0Accountability\u00a0and Whistleblower Protection Act by a vote of 368-55. The legislation will now head to the President\u2019s desk to be signed into law.<\/p>\n

\"U.S.
U.S. Rep. Bob Latta<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

S. 1094 reforms the agency and allows the VA Secretary\u00a0to remove, demote, or suspend any VA employee for poor performance or misconduct. The\u00a0legislation\u00a0also contains a number of important whistleblower protections.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur nation\u2019s\u00a0veterans, who have made countless sacrifices for our country, deserve to have access to timely, quality care,\u201d\u00a0said Latta.\u00a0\u201cIf a VA employee is not helping with the mission, either through misconduct or poor performance, then\u00a0appropriate punitive action should be taken.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrently, there are far too many hoops to jump through to fire or punish misbehaving employees, and it\u2019s veterans that are suffering the consequences,\u201d Latta added.\u00a0\u201cI look forward to the President signing this important piece of bipartisan legislation into law.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), it takes six months to a year on average to remove federal employees, even for examples of malfeasance. In one particular case, a VA employee took a veteran off-site from a substance abuse\u00a0clinic to buy illicit drugs. It took over a year for the VA to even begin procedures to remove the employee for clear misconduct. Senior VA officials have testified before Congress that it is often difficult to fire bad employees at the agency.<\/p>\n

In addition, the legislation also establishes the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection and\u00a0creates a new assistant secretary position in charge of whistleblower protections and accountability. Employees that have come forward with examples of\u00a0wrongdoing at the VA have faced retribution from supervisors, and S. 1094 would provide tools to ensure whistleblowers are able to disclose problems at the agency to higher-ups without fear of punishment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Submitted information WASHINGTON, D.C.\u00a0— U.S. Representative Bob Latta (R-Bowling Green) has joined his colleagues in passing\u00a0S. 1094, the bipartisan Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)\u00a0Accountability\u00a0and Whistleblower Protection Act by a vote of 368-55. The legislation will now head to the President\u2019s desk to be signed into law. S. 1094 reforms the agency and allows the VA […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 21:05:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}