Department of Veterans Affairs Management Accountability Act of 2014 (H.R. 4031; 113th Congress)

Department of Veterans Affairs Management Accountability Act of 2014

Full title	To amend title 38, United States Code, to provide for the removal of Senior Executive Service employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs for performance, and for other purposes.
Introduced in	113th United States Congress
Introduced on	February 11, 2014
Sponsored by	Rep. Jeff Miller (R, FL-1)
Number of Co-Sponsors	9
Effects and Codifications
U.S.C. section(s) affected	38 U.S.C. § 713, 38 U.S.C. ch. 7
Agencies affected	United States Department of Veterans Affairs
Legislative history
Introduced in the House as H.R. 4031 by Rep. Jeff Miller (R, FL-1) on February 11, 2014 Committee consideration by: United States House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Passed the House on May 21, 2014 (Rollc Call Vote 229: 390-33)

The Department of Veterans Affairs Management Accountability Act of 2014 (H.R. 4031) is a bill that would give the United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs the authority to remove or demote any individual from the Senior Executive Service upon determining that such individual's performance warrants removal or demotion. The bill was written in response to a scandal indicating that some VA hospitals were keeping secret waiting lists for care, the length of which may have led to the deaths of some veterans.

The bill was introduced into the United States House of Representatives during the 113th United States Congress. It passed the House on May 21, 2014.

In May 2014, questions involving substandard timely care and false records covering up related timelines came to light, involving treatment of veterans in a number of VA hospitals. Eric Shinseki, then Secretary of Veterans Affairs, resigned on May 30, 2014. Senior Veterans Affairs officials reportedly kept secret waiting lists in order to hide the high number of veterans that were forced to wait for months to receive important medical care. As many as 450 senior officials may have been involved, including VA hospital managers. Some veterans died while they were still awaiting treatment.

A VA department handbook on administrative policies indicates that employees have 30 days to appeal any disciplinary action before it can be taken and have all disciplinary actions or reprimands removed from their records after two years. The Department has to meet high standards for doing things like separately proving an employee was absent each and every day if the employee quits showing up to work and proving that there is a direct relationship between the misconduct and their own efficiency.

Data provided by the Office of Personnel Management shows that only 7,349 federal employees were fired in 2013 out of a total of almost 2 million.

This summary is based largely on the summary provided by the Congressional Research Service, a public domain source.

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