Executive
Waste of the Day: Throwback Thursday: In 2010, Veterans Affairs Monkeyed Around with Cash
The Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) squandered money on a deserted monkey house and over 300 vacant buildings.
Topline: While tens of thousands of our nation’s soldiers were serving in Afghanistan, the Department of Veterans Affairs was spending money on a deserted monkey house and hundreds of other vacant buildings.
The VA and its wasteful project
The Government Accountability Office said the VA spent $175 million in 2010 — $252.3 million in today’s money — on maintenance at unused buildings, including a pink, octagonal monkey house used for storage in Dayton, Ohio.
The VA claimed it was only $34 million, but either way it’s money that should have been used to more directly support combat veterans.
That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.
Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.
Coburn’s Wastebook 2010 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $11.5 billion, including the money spent on abandoned VA facilities.
Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com.
Key facts: FOX News reported in 2010 that 314 of the VA’s 5,507 buildings were completely abandoned.
Reporters visited sites around the country and found rats, fungus, “barrels of unidentified chemicals” and more.
The Edward Hines Jr. VA Medical Center outside Chicago, which the VA spent $20,000 per year to maintain, had been empty for 15 years and was flooded with chemical-laced water.
Why didn’t they just demolish the buildings?
Complex federal rules made it difficult for the VA to sell the buildings, which were meant for housing, psychological support and more for veterans. They were supposedly too expensive to demolish.
Outsiders thought the properties could be put to better use.
“You got dormant buildings? You want to give them away? Refurbish them! Use them!” Larry Van Kurant, a spokesman for Veterans of Foreign Wars, told FOX News.
Summary: It took the VA until 2017 to announce that it would demolish or restore all of its unused buildings. It appears that no one has quantified the total amount of money wasted in the years before then.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by CEO & founder, Adam Andrzejewski, with Jeremy Portnoy. Learn more at OpenTheBooks.com.
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
Adam Andrzejewski (say: Angie-eff-ski) was the CEO/founder of OpenTheBooks.com. Before dedicating his life to public service, Adam co-founded HomePages Directories, a $20 million publishing company (1997-2007). His works have been featured on the BBC, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, C-SPAN, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, FOX News, CNN, National Public Radio (NPR), Forbes, Newsweek, and many other national media.
Today, OpenTheBooks.com is the largest private repository of U.S. public-sector spending. Mission: post "every dime, online, in real time." In 2022, OpenTheBooks.com captured nearly all public expenditures in the country, including nearly all disclosed federal government spending; 50 of 50 state checkbooks; and 25 million public employee salary and pension records from 50,000 public bodies across America.
The group's aggressive transparency and forensic auditing of government spending has led to the assembly of grand juries, indictments, and successful prosecutions; congressional briefings, hearings, and subpoenas; Government Accountability Office (GAO) audits; Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports; federal legislation; and much more.
Our Honorary Chairman - In Memoriam is U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, MD.
Andrzejewski's federal oversight work was included in the President's Budget To Congress FY2021. The budget cited his organization by name, bullet-pointed their findings, and footnoted/hyperlinked to their report.
Posted on YouTube, Andrzejewski's presentation, The Depth of the Swamp, at the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar 2020 in Naples, Florida received 3.8 million views.
Andrzejewski has spoken at the Columbia School of Journalism, Harvard Law School and the law schools at Georgetown and George Washington regarding big data journalism. As a senior policy contributor at Forbes, Adam had nearly 20 million pageviews on 206 published investigations. In 2022, investigative fact-finding on Dr. Fauci's finances led to his cancellation at Forbes.
In 2022, Andrzejewski did 473 live television and radio interviews across broadcast, major cable platforms, and radio shows. Andrzejewski is the author of The Waste of the Day column at Real Clear Policy. The column is syndicated by Sinclair Broadcast Group, owners of nearly 200 ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX affiliates across USA.
Andrzejewski passed away in his sleep at his home in in Hinsdale, Illinois, on August 18, 2024. He is survived by his wife Kerry and three daughters. He also served as a lector at St. Isaac Jogues Catholic Church and finished the Chicago Marathon eight times (PR 3:58.49 in 2022).
Waste of the Day articles published after August 18, 2024 are considered posthumous publications.
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