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DIRECTOR OF BECKLEY VA IS GONE, BUT IS IT
PERMANENT?
-- Has been reassigned to unidentified "special
projects" f
or at least four months at VA's Central Office.
Beckley, West Virginia VA
For more about problems at the Beckley VA, use the VA Watchdog search
engine...click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/ses
search.php?q=beckley&op=and
Story here...
http://www.register
-herald.com/local/local_story
_270220905.html
Story below:
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Director of Beckley VA hospital gone, but is it
permanent?
Husson ‘temporarily reassigned’
By Mannix Porterfield
Register-Herald Reporter
Jerry Husson is miles away from his old post as director of the Beckley
VA Medical Center, reassigned to unidentified “special projects” for at
least four months at the Veterans Administration’s chief financial
office in the nation’s capital.
Husson’s new mission developed while the Beckley facility came under
scrutiny this year by the Department of Veterans Affairs in a
controversy surrounding reports of inadequate staffing and low morale.
Initially, the VA’s national office said Husson was working out of the
VA hospital in Martinsburg, but a spokesman there wasn’t familiar with
his name and said he wasn’t there.
A computer check showed Husson, instead, was at the national VA office.
Reached there, Husson was reluctant to go into much detail about his
sudden change in status with the VA, except to say he was assigned to
deal with “special projects,” which he wouldn’t describe.
“As it appears right now, the detail is only for 120 days,” Husson said
in a telephone interview.
Asked if he would return to the Beckley facility at the end of the
four-month duty, which the Department of Veterans Affairs described as
temporary, Husson said he couldn’t say what he would be doing next.
“That’s up to my superiors, whether they send me back or do something
else with me,” he said.
Husson said he wouldn’t respond to a broadcast report linking his
reassignment to a formal review Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., sought of
the Beckley facility amid complaints of chronic staff shortages and
diminished morale among employees.
Rockefeller’s office last week said a report, compiled by the National
Center for Organization Development, uncovered both weaknesses and
strengths at the facility, but declined to be specific about its
contents. An aide to Rockefeller said, “It’s not a public report.”
Karin McGraw, the acting director of the facility, said the report
generally was positive, adding, “Many of the recommendations made for
improvement were those that we had already begun implementing.”
Asked to comment on a media report that his new assignment was related
to that study, Husson said, “I’m not going to address any of that
garbage that goes on.”
Jo Schuda, a spokesperson for the VA in Washington, said she couldn’t
explain why Husson was given the special assignment or what it entailed,
only that it was temporary.
“It’s not uncommon for people to be moved to fill other vacancies that
occur for a short time,” she said.
— E-mail:
mannix@register-herald.com
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Larry Scott --
