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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Firing of VA hospital director raises other questions

When the Veterans Affairs scandal was breaking last year, there was no delay from politicians and the press in identifying the villain: Sharon Helman.

Helman, the former director of the Spokane VA center who had taken over the Phoenix hospital, became the face of the scandal, perhaps even more than former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. A VA inspector-general report concluded that Helman had falsified wait times and that veterans had died while waiting for care at the Phoenix hospital. In the end, she was fired by the VA in a manner that left many of the important questions unanswered and let most everyone else off the hook, despite a well-documented history of problems in Phoenix and elsewhere that pre-dated Helman.

Helman appealed her firing and lost, but her dismissal was not upheld over the issues with wait lists and patient care but over her improper acceptance of gifts from a lobbyist. That aspect of her case moves onward: A criminal investigation by the VA’s Office of Inspector General and the FBI is continuing into a relationship between Helman and a former top VA official turned K Street consultant – a relationship that traces back to Helman’s time in Spokane. The Arizona Republic reported that Helman has refused to answer inquiries in the investigation, citing her Fifth Amendment rights.

The lobbyist in question, Dennis M. Lewis, once ran the VA’s Northwest region and was Helman’s boss before going to work for Jefferson Consulting Group, a company that pursues contracts with the VA system. According to the Republic and a federal employment appeals board, he provided her thousands of dollars of gifts while she was director of the Phoenix hospital. The Jefferson group fired Lewis in December, saying the gifts were a violation of its ethics policies.

The gifts included tickets for Helman and her daughters to a Beyonce concert as well as a weeklong trip for her family to Disneyland costing more than $11,000. They also included several plane tickets.

Helman and Lewis had an association going back to at least 2006, when she was appointed head of the Roseburg, Oregon, VA hospital and he was overseeing the VA network of hospitals in the region. While Lewis held that position, Helman moved into directors’ posts in Walla Walla and then Spokane. She then transferred to the top position at the Chicago hospital, and then, in 2012, to Phoenix.

According to a database search of public records, Lewis established addresses in the cities where Helman was working – in Spokane for part of her time here, in a Chicago suburb when she moved there and in the Phoenix area. Both Helman and Lewis established addresses in Peoria, Arizona.

Helman was fired in November, though she’d been placed on leave last May. The VA cited three reasons for firing her: falsifying wait lists, retaliating against whistleblowers and accepting improper gifts. Helman appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which upheld the firing but only on the account of improper gifts.

Helman’s attorneys celebrated this in a statement: “Sharon Helman did not kill veterans. Sharon Helman did not manipulate wait time data. The VA’s preferred storyline has been proven a fabrication, of which the VA was aware the entire time.”

But the truth of the board’s finding in December was much more equivocal. Chief Administrative Judge Stephen Mish repeatedly indicated that the VA had failed to “connect the dots” and implied repeatedly that the VA’s case against her was vague and lazy – and perhaps designed to protect senior administrators more than get to the truth.

For example, the VA claimed that Helman failed to notify “senior leadership” about a huge backlog in patient care. But Mish noted that the VA did not even attempt to substantiate this: “It is unclear what specific persons or offices the term ‘senior leadership’ is meant to encompass. Perhaps that is by design, perhaps not. As will be explained below, failure to identify them and submit evidence from them about whether or not the appellant informed them of the October 2012 2,501-patient backlog does not redound to the agency’s advantage.”

On the gifts question, though, Mish was clear: “I conclude the (Helman’s) offenses are serious and more likely than not intentional. I conclude (Helman) has little rehabilitative potential. She has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing in the course of this appeal and attempted to deflect attention from her own actions by pointing to political considerations and complaining the agency has been looking into her private life.”

Helman claims she’s innocent. That’s impossible to swallow, and her connection to Lewis and his gifts seem like a worst-case example of the way that lobbyists and bureaucrats cynically and opportunistically spin the wheel of taxpayer money.

But still – as the VA’s halfhearted case against her shows – none of that means that she isn’t being scapegoated.

Shawn Vestal can be reached at (509) 459-5431 or shawnv@spokesman.com. Follow him on Twitter at @vestal13.