Rep. Kiggans leads hearing on VA incentive payment issues

Jen Kiggans, R-Va., led a hearing on Tuesday to discuss millions of dollars’ worth of incentive payments distributed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) that were improperly documented.

Kiggans, at the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing, said incentive payments for recruitment, relocation and retention have lacked oversight for years, according to a news release from the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

“They call it the three Rs, which are recruitment, retention, and relocation,” Chris Lovell, a retired Marine Corps Major and CEO of veteran-owned Lovell Government Services, described to Fox News Digital. “It gives additional pay to folks… to keep them and retain them, especially if they have specialty vocations that the VA needs.”

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A recent audit found that between 2020 and 2023, VA payments for relocation grew by 85%, retention payments grew by 131%, and recruitment payments increased by 237%. A total of $1.2 billion worth of incentive payments were given to employees during that period, but $341 million of those were not properly documented, according to the committee.

The audit discovered that in one instance, the Veterans Health Administration awarded $30,000 in relocation payments to an employee who never moved, the release noted.

Lovell, whose Florida-based business provides resources to the VA, said that this has been an ongoing problem. A 2017 report found improper payments from the VA totaled over $158 million in unsupported spending, according to the release.

These documentation issues could be mitigated if the agency improved its management and upgraded its outdated system, Lovell said. The Defense Civilian Pay System, used by both the Department of Defense and the VA, was created more than 30 years ago.

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“It’s a two-pronged approach to cleaning up what’s perceived as fraud and waste,” he said. “If [management says] they want to clean up erroneous payments or payments without documentation, then they need to supervise that. … And the second piece of that improvement process… is the system.”

However, Lovell said that the VA is doing “great things” for veterans on a daily basis.

“We’re happy to be a part of that,” he said.

In an email, a spokesperson for the VA referred Fox News Digital to the agency’s testimony at the hearing.

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The VA currently has around 482,000 employees, the majority of whom work in the Veterans Health Administration, according to its website.

Earlier this year, the Department of Government Efficiency found the VA had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for website changes before canceling the contract and having an internal staffer take over.

While combing through loads and loads of data, DOGE discovered a previous contract by the VA for its website maintenance.

“Good work by @DeptVetAffairs,” DOGE said in a post on X. “VA was previously paying ~$380,000/month for minor website modifications. That contract has not been renewed, and the same work is now being executed by 1 internal VA software engineer spending ~10 hours/week.”