A pair of Department of Veterans Affairs officials who were demoted after the inspector general found they had stolen $400,000 from the agency won’t actually be facing any punishment because the VA bungled the paperwork for their demotions.
The VA announced last month that Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves would be stripped of their present positions after they were both accused of manipulating a VA program meant to relocate agency employees who transfer long distances to take jobs within the VA. Rubens fraudulently netted more than $274,000 and Graves more than $129,000, according to the agency’s inspector general, but the VA indicated it would make no attempt to recover the money they siphoned from the program.
The VA has now been forced to rescind their demotions thanks to a paperwork error, effectively negating the only punishment the two officials would have received.
Both Rubens and Graves had appealed the VA’s original decision to the Merit Systems Protection Board, a body that helps sort through disagreements among federal employees and management.
“During a review of the appeals, agency counsel discovered that, due to an administrative error, one of the five binders of evidence supporting each action had inadvertently been omitted from the materials provided to the employees with their proposed demotion paperwork,” the VA said in a lengthy statement Thursday.
Because the VA had forgotten to hand over one of the five binders of evidence against Rubens and Graves, the agency must now “rescind” their punishment and attempt to pursue it again after both employees have had a chance to prepare a defense against the evidence in the forgotten binder.
The embattled officials will have a chance to appeal the punishment a second time if the VA decides to try for their demotions once more. Both Rubens and Graves pleaded the Fifth in a congressional hearing last month and refused to answer questions about their alleged fraud.
VA leadership has come under fire for its seeming refusal to hold employees accused of misconduct accountable. The case of Rubens and Graves, who may escape even a minimal form of discipline despite weeks of pressure from a bipartisan group of lawmakers who called their actions “shockingly unethical,” is emblematic of a larger problem throughout the agency.
In the year and a half since the explosion of a scandal over secret patient waiting at 110 facilities across the country, only three VA officials have ever been fired for their role in covering up long delays in veterans’ health care.
Rep. Jeff Miller, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said the latest incident proves “VA’s incompetence knows no bounds.”
“By now, it’s clear to nearly every objective observer that VA’s top officials don’t know how to properly discipline employees,” Miller said. “What remains unclear, however, is whether they are even interested in doing so.”
