Start talking.
As Aurora’s own Chernobyl on the Fitzsimons/Anschutz campus threatens to destroy the planet, suddenly no one wants to talk about it. Veteran’s Administration officials, Kiewit-Turner officials, congressional staffers are suddenly silent about the mess created in trying to build a new VA hospital in Aurora.
Not that government wonks and giant construction companies are normally a fountain of usable information. But now that it looks like mismanagement, design problems and who-knows-what-else are driving cost overruns of many hundreds of millions of dollars, all sides have resorted to terse and meaningless prepared statements that they refuse to comment beyond.
As it stands, sort of, the already bloated $600 million Aurora VA hospitalpalooza will now cost more than $1 billion. That’s more than a $400 million “oopsie” beyond what was already a $100 million detour through the woods.
Folks, this isn’t mismanagement. This is criminal. I can see running up a $10 million or so overrun because crews with concrete in the truck stood around several times waiting for the steel guys to finish up. But $400 million dollars?
Just how much are we expected to believe here? If you haven’t been in the area lately, there’s nothing there but a few floors worth of steel and concrete. Granted, it’s a lot of concrete and steel. But it’s not like they just realized that all the rooms in the hospital were 2-feet too narrow and we gotta start over. There are no walls. There ain’t nothing there. So all of this misfortune is design changes? Are you telling me that some architect and engineer somewhere keeps wadding up paper and throwing it in the trash over and over and over, to the tune of $400 million dollars?
Nope. I will not believe that. You could take 100 middle school students and put them in a room and make them invent engineering and architecture before designing a VA hospital in less time and for less than $400 million. If this were China, they would have five culprits on a platform at city hall awaiting a hanging. But not here, where everyone involved so far has made it clear they are not to blame and we have created a government that permits hiding these kind of cataclysms.
Since Congress and the Obama Administration are the ones in the middle of the mess and probably in some way responsible, probably in a very big way, exactly who is it we can count on or go to to unravel Aurora’s $400 million question? Superman? Edward Snowden? Geraldo?
Fer chrissakes, for this kind of money we could have built a marble clad monorail to Aspen and back that veterans could ride to have hip replacements done in rail cars painted in gold leaf.
Just a couple of years ago when it looked like Congress would actually start writing checks to fund this splurge, VA officials were talking plenty about how excited they were to get out of the VA’s current Chamber of Horrors in Denver.
“It’s the difference between Disneyland and a dungeon,” said William Robinson, Colorado Board of Veteran Affairs secretary and a U.S. Army veteran who has been treated at the Denver VA facility. That was two years ago.
Hospital employees were ecstatic because the hospital would offer all private rooms with flat-screen TVs and well-lighted rooms. Ack. We’re talking about 200 or so rooms, folks. That’s $5 million a room. They must be canning the Aurora Borealis and piping it into patient rooms with aromatherapy created by a stable of flatulent unicorns.
“Our goal is to improve the veterans’ health care experience so they can walk out of that facility and go, ‘Wow, I kind of really enjoyed that today,’” Judi Guy, project coordinator for the Denver VA replacement facility, told the Aurora Sentinel in January 2011.
We’re all saying “wow” now, Judi.
The problem is, veterans may never walk into the place. The construction project has become so messed up, the general contractor is talking about walking away. But that’s all they or anyone else is talking about.
I really don’t care who’s going to sue whom at this point. Somebody in the Obama Administration and someone in Congress needs to start telling everything they know right now. This is why Americans hate Congress and the government. This is why we pay too much for health care. The boondoggle is bad enough, but the frittering silence makes it all the worse. Start talking.
Reach editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com
You took Fitzsimons that was a VA Hospital to start with turned it into a med school an then said no room for Vets or cant get med cair here move on. im a vietnam vet trying to get help myself.
Although I agree that the cost over runs and mismanagement are offensive, Perry stating: “Nothing short of Executions….” I guess Perry has just put a $ amount that he’d kill for. Now if he would take a stand on the value of human life vs. execution, as in the death penalty cases in Colorado, I would be surprised. But there was no mention of race or ethnicity in the article of the accused so I guess “Execution” is ok.