JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Doug Collins, the secretary of veterans affairs, was on Capitol Hill yesterday, explaining plans to drastically reorganize the VA's bureaucracy. Democrats, though, were focused on something else - the secretary's response to the death of a VA nurse, Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis. NPR's Quil Lawrence covers veterans and is here to tell us more. Hi.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Hi.
SUMMERS: So, Quil, to start, what was the official purpose of this hearing?
LAWRENCE: Well, the VA has announced a major overhaul of the bureaucracy. They're going to change 18 administrative regions down to five. I don't think you'll ever hear anyone say the VA needs more red tape, but this plan is coming down after a full year of mixed messages at VA, which the secretary nodded to.
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DOUG COLLINS: But first off, let me just state this is not a reduction in force. This is not an effort to diminish direct care for veterans. This is a reorganization that will eliminate the glut of VA administrative overhead and push more resources directly into the field.
LAWRENCE: It's been a roller-coaster year for staff at the VA. There was first these initial announcements of a plan to cut 83,000 employees. That was later rolled back. But at the hearing yesterday, VA officials confirmed that a net 30,000 staff have left in the past year, mostly in health care, some in fields that are chronically short-staffed at VA, like nursing. I've been hearing from mental health care providers in particular that it's become a harder place to work. And VA staff sometimes feel like their leadership wants them to quit.
SUMMERS: And of course, that brings us to the topic that was not planned. The VA secretary seemed to be taking heat for his reaction after Alex Pretti, that VA staff nurse we mentioned, was shot to death last weekend by Border Patrol agents here in Minnesota. What do we know there?
LAWRENCE: Yeah, so the shooting, it was more than a day before the secretary mentioned it on social media. He sent a condolence to the Pretti family, but then he leaned into politics. And yesterday at the hearing, that was mentioned by Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin.
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ELISSA SLOTKIN: You put out a statement that said, quote, "such tragedies are unfortunately happening in Minnesota because (ph) state and local officials' refusal to cooperate with the federal government to enforce the law and deport dangerous illegal criminals."
COLLINS: Alex Pretti's death was a tragedy, as I've stated, and I will continue to stand by that statement.
LAWRENCE: Now, one of Collins' senior officials at the hearing has mentioned that in the - at the Minneapolis VA, they did hold a memorial for Alex Pretti, but it came out later in the hearing that an internal email from the Minneapolis leadership had told staff, quote, "we have been instructed to pause that memorial." Now, the staff at that VA held the memorial anyway. But at the hearing, VA officials denied that they told anyone to pause it, and Slotkin said that was hard to believe. And that wasn't the only time in the hearing that people sort of mentioned this lack of trust.
SUMMERS: That lack of trust you're talking about between VA officials and senators?
LAWRENCE: Right. Yeah, and that brings us back to really the meat of the hearing. The VA has a really ambitious plan to reorganize, but - and a lot of it has to do with how much they intend to privatize care at VA, but they haven't been sharing details with Congress as they move along. The ranking member on the committee, Senator Richard Blumenthal, put out a 52-page report this month, sounding the alarm about wait times and vacancies, saying, for example, that there was a 35-day average wait time to get a mental health care appointment.
Now, the VA yesterday showed up with numbers at the hearing that were totally different, saying, no, the wait times are only half that. Republican senators seem to be taking that on faith. Democrats tell me they've asked for details repeatedly and they don't get anything. So eventually, we'll see how this shakes out, but the changes may be well underway and perhaps irreversible by then.
SUMMERS: NPR's Quil Lawrence, thanks so much.
LAWRENCE: Thank you.
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