House committee subpoenas Phila. VA files

A House committee voted Thursday to subpoena personnel files from the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs benefits office, saying VA officials had ignored its requests for months.

It is only the third time the House Committee on Veterans Affairs has issued a subpoena, and the latest sign that scrutiny of the Philadelphia office, which culminated in a blistering investigative report released last month, is expanding.

"There is no doubt that there are serious issues plaguing the operations of the Philadelphia regional office," said Chairman Jeff Miller (R., Fla.). "And we can no longer afford to allow VA to stonewall legitimate requests for information about that or about any other VA facility."

VA Secretary Robert McDonald rebutted the claim, saying in a letter to Miller that the documents would have been released if committee staffers had agreed to "certain reasonable privacy conditions" that he said are necessary because the committee has a history of giving sensitive information to the media.

At a hearing on Capitol Hill last week, VA officials said the Philadelphia office - which oversees benefits to 825,000 veterans in the region - is the most troubled in the nation. In a report this month, the VA's inspector general found widespread disarray there, including 31,000 neglected inquiries from veterans, thousands of pieces of mail inappropriately stamped for shredding, and $2.2 million in overpayments.

The report also cited deep mistrust between management and employees at the office, which has been described as having a toxic culture.

The subpoena seeks all documents pertaining to employee complaints filed with the Merit System Protection Board and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission since Dec. 31, 2008.

U.S. Rep. Ryan Costello (R., Pa.), a member of the committee, said the group wants to know if any VA employees have had multiple complaints lodged against them.

"It's one thing when an individual gets accused of mismanagement or mistreating an employee in one instance," he said. "It's an entirely different circumstance when you see the same types of complaints and same nature of complaints lodged against the same individuals."

Miller said the committee first requested the documents in December 2014. Some were provided by the VA on Wednesday night, but they were heavily redacted and did not include the names of supervisors involved, he said.

McDonald, in his letter to Miller, said the VA has redacted only sensitive information such as Social Security numbers and names of witnesses in roughly 9,000 pages of material it has provided.

He called the subpoena "a needless and unhelpful step that unnecessarily erodes" the public's confidence in the VA's and the committee's ability to work together.