In the News

Earlier this year, Congress passed a measure that will cost $17 billion over 10 years to address unconscionable delays in treatment at medical facilities run by the Department of Veterans Affairs. End of story?

Hardly. The VA is still fumbling major construction projects, including in Aurora, where the cost overrun for a new hospital is catastrophic, escalating from a $600 million estimate to $1 billion — and delays almost equally staggering.

Fortunately, the means of addressing these fiascos is at hand. On Tuesday, the House passed with bipartisan support the Construction Assistance Act, which would impose reforms on the VA recommended by the Government Accountability Office.

Now it's up to the Senate to rise to the occasion and get this bill passed into law. It's important for the country and for Colorado.

The bill is the work of Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., and a Democratic colleague from Arizona, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, who serves with him on the House Veterans Affairs Committee. And it has one important twist that isn't a specific recommendation by the GAO. It would put an emergency manager from the Army Corps of Engineers in charge of troubled projects in Aurora, New Orleans and Orlando.

As Coffman points out, the GAO singled out the Corps for its ability to build projects of a similar scale on time and within budget. And since it's painfully apparent that the scope of the Aurora hospital has the VA flummoxed, with the agency mired in litigation with the general contractor, it's time to bring in the A-Team.

Sure, the Construction Assistance Act will cost money — but at most $3 million over five years. That's a pittance compared to the earlier VA reform bill, not to mention the massive cost overruns in construction that this legislation is geared to stop.