Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin said Wednesday that he would have fought the decision to rehire a VA employee who tried to fire a whistleblower, after that whistleblower revealed the employee was caught drunk driving.
DeWayne Hamlin is the director of the VA Caribbean Healthcare System in Puerto Rico, and he was fired the day President Trump took office, Jan. 20. But Hamlin appealed that decision to the Merit Systems Protection Board, won his appeal, and was placed back in his job.
The case has led to renewed criticism of the VA’s inability to fire corrupt or negligent employees, including the many still working there connected to the VA wait-time scandal of 2014.
The VA has since said that Shulkin was not able to address the Hamlin case, and Shulkin said at a White House briefing Wednesday that the case involving Hamlin was beyond his control.
“When we talk about the situation related to Mr. Hamlin, that decision was made before I was secretary,” he told reporters.
“I would not have supported a decision that would have allowed him back,” he said of Hamlin. “The Merit Systems Protection Board indicated that they believed that we needed to take him back. I would have fought that through all the appeals processes that were available to us.”
Shulkin has said since he took office that he supports legislation moving through Congress aimed at making it easier for the VA to fire employees for cause.
That bill, which passed the House in March, has been considered in the Senate for the last several weeks. The House bill would give the VA secretary more weight in decisions to fire VA workers, and the Senate is considering a version that would extend the appeals period for those workers.
Still, Shulkin said the bill as it’s shaping up could have prevented Hamlin from being rehired.
“The courts would be more deferential, that’s the legal term, to the secretary’s opinion,” he said. “I do believe that would have changed the situation.”
