AURORA | U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, is putting pressure on the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs to release a report on the cost overruns and project management issues with the Aurora VA hospital currently under construction.
In a Tuesday, March 29, statement, Coffman said he wrote to VA Secretary Robert McDonald last week, urging him to make the VA’s Administrative Investigation Board (AIB) report available to the public. Last year Coffman made a similar request regarding the report, seeking its release by Oct. 23, 2015. That date passed, according to Coffman, with no response from McDonald.
The AIB report was completed last September but it was only last week that an unredacted summary of its findings was provided to Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Florida, who is chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. VA Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson has said the delay was due to months of report reviews.
“I insist that you make this document available to other members of Congress and the American people,” Coffman said in his letter to Secretary McDonald. “American taxpayers and veterans are entitled to VA’s detailed explanation as to how the costs of this project spiraled out-of-control seemingly overnight.”
A Corps of Engineers investigation into what went wrong said the VA repeatedly changed the design and square footage of the hospital. The Corps also said the VA used a complicated contract process that department officials didn’t understand, and that they adopted it too late in the process, leading to disputes and conflicting cost estimates.
“The American people deserve to know exactly what happened to drive over $1 billion in cost overruns,” Coffman continued. “Release this unredacted document no later than April 8, 2016.”
Coffman has been among the most outspoken members of Congress regarding the cost overruns and mismanagement of the VA’s Aurora hospital construction project. His efforts in the U.S. House resulted in the VA being stripped of construction management authority; the Army Corps of Engineers took over that authority in 2015 before the federal government awarded a final construction contract for the hospital last fall.
The $1.7-billion total price tag for the Aurora VA hospital means the medical center will cost nearly triple the estimates of last year.
The hospital is set to open in January 2018.