Editorial: Canceled town halls, shrugged-off support staff disrespect value of Pittsburgh VA

The Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Health System is dealing with deep losses to its workforce.

In an exclusive interview with TribLive, Pittsburgh VA director Donald Koenig spoke about the reductions. Since January, 238 employees have been lost. Another 87 will be gone by the end of the year.

There are 151 employees expected to join over that period, but that is still a net loss to the Pittsburgh VA of 174 workers. It works out to a decrease of 3% of the total staff.

It reflects the overall push to cut federal government staff and maximize efficiency. Nationwide, the VA is expected to lose 30,000 employees. That can be difficult to accept as necessary when it was just August 2017 that President Donald Trump signed the VA Choice and Quality Employment Act in an effort to correct systemic staffing deficits.

Koenig said the reductions are small and have little impact on veteran care. But little impact is not no impact.

Take the accessibility of services. For some veterans, that requires transportation. When employees were asked to volunteer to step aside, about 1,000 Pittsburgh VA workers did. Many of those were declined because they were patient care positions. But van drivers? More of them walked away than expected.

With fewer drivers, the Pittsburgh VA has had to make tough choices, putting the veterans it is legally required to transport at the front of the line.

With that in mind, it is puzzling to hear Koenig shrug off some employee decreases. He said local losses were mostly support staff without impact on “our ability to take care of veterans.”

That disrespects the support staff and the veterans.

Pull out the foundation and the house falls. Support is there for a reason. Disregard the contributions of van drivers and office assistants today, and it could be technicians and nurses tomorrow.

To add insult to injury, personnel aren’t the only thing being cut. So is conversation.

The Pittsburgh VA had a slate of town hall meetings scheduled throughout the region for veterans to bring questions and concerns directly to the facility’s leaders. One of those town halls happened Tuesday in Washington.

Four more were scheduled. Three were planned for next week in Baden, Hopwood and Jeannette. The last was set for St. Clairsville, Ohio, in August.

On Thursday, those events were canceled without explanation via a press release.

This is an example of the kind of “shoot first, ask questions later” pattern the federal government has indulged in recently.

Why waste the VA resources already invested in planning and promoting the town halls only to cancel the series after its first outing?

Can the Pittsburgh VA continue to provide service to the veterans in its charge? Committed employees will no doubt try. But leadership owes staff and clients more than such easy dismissal.