Heller tells VA: Long waits persist
WASHINGTON — Disability claims by Nevada veterans are handled by a Department of Veteran Affairs office in Reno that not only is the slowest in the nation, but one that tends to make lots of mistakes as well, Sen. Dean Heller on Wednesday told a top VA official trying to turn around the troubled agency.
At a Senate hearing, Heller said the Reno outpost is “the worst VA regional office in the country.” He told acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson that improvement has been slow in the average number of days to process claims.
“I have been harping on this for five years, and they are making progress,” Heller said with a note of sarcasm. “They’ve reduced it 10 days. It’s gone from 350-to-351 days to 340 days, over five years.”
On top of that, he said, an audit completed in June by the VA inspector general found errors in 51 percent of claims handled by clerks in Reno.
“I’m frustrated for every veteran in the state of Nevada,” Heller told Gibson.
The Nevada Republican and other members of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs blew their frustrations on Gibson, who was appointed on May 30 to serve as interim secretary following the resignation of Gen. Eric Shinseki. Obama has nominated Robert McDonald, a former chief executive of Proctor & Gamble, to head the agency.
Heller was scheduled to meet on Thursday with McDonald, in advance of the nominee’s confirmation hearing on July 22. The Nevadan said he planned to deliver the same message about claim backlogs. He said he will seek support for a bill he and Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., introduced in March that they say will streamline claims processing and reduce backlogs across the VA system.
“It’s more important the nominee understands what the concerns are than the acting secretary,” Heller said after the hearing. “I think he’s making progress. I don’t know if he’s making any progress in Reno,” where Heller has been openly seeking the removal of office director Ed Russell.
Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760. Find him on Twitter: @STetreaultDC.
