The Veterans Affairs’ Office of Inspector General is investigating the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP) for allegedly aiding in retaliation against whistleblowers, Government Executive reports.
Congress passed the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act in 2017, which created the OAWP and aimed to establish “whistle-blower protection and provide employees with whistle-blower disclosure and merit system protection training” at the VA. When Trump signed the bill into law in June 2017, he called it “one of the largest reforms to the VA in its history.”
“VA accountability is essential to making sure that our veterans are treated with the respect they have so richly earned,” Trump said at the time. He later added the bill “protects whistleblowers who do the right thing.”
But the office was met with skepticism by the agency’s employees. As Federal News Network, a Washington, D.C.-based radio station that focuses on news pertaining to U.S. government staff, reported in July 2018, the “VA’s culture and history of whistleblower retaliation” stymied “the department’s employees from fully embracing OAWP as a resource.”
And, as it turns out, for good reason.
According to Government Executive, the VA Inspector General is conducting a “prompt reviews of significant events” at the OAWP.
“There has been considerable interest by some members of Congress and other stakeholders in this effort,” IG spokesman Mike Nacincik told Government Executive.
According to Government Executive, employees at the VA feel “betrayed or neglected by an office they believed was going to help them but ended up doing the opposite.”
“OAWP set me up,” Dan Martin, a chief engineer at VA’s Northern Indiana Health Care System, bluntly told the outlet. In 2016, Martin had reported “contracting violations related to a non-functioning water filtration system,” Government Ethics reports. He claims he was retaliated against for reporting the violations, and subsequently “stripped of his responsibilities and sent to work in an office without heat or air conditioning.” He says his supervisors weren't made aware of his efforts to "surreptitiously record conversations with procurement officers" until OAWP became involved.
“Some of them are so crooked they swallow nails and spit up corkscrews,” Martin said of OAWP.
GE’s reporting mirror reporting from other news outlets. In June 2018. NPR published a report about a culture of fear and retaliation inside the VA.
"It's a toxic environment there," Alan Hyde, a Marine Corps veteran and former employee at the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System told NPR. "And I feel sorry for the veterans."
"If you say anything about patient care and the problems, you're quickly labeled a troublemaker and attacked by a clique that just promotes itself,” one employee told the network. “Your life becomes hell.”
VA spokesman Curt Cashour told Government Executive the department “welcomes the inspector general’s oversight.” But insiders say OAWP has a long way to go before employees trust the office.
“It scares you,” one VA employee told Government Executive. “You don’t want to come forward. People are afraid.”
