Gober prefers a career politician over a Veteran.
The country’s largest hospital system lost its top two leaders in two weeks, is under fire from powerful politicians and interest groups, and awaits an internal overhaul in the glare of an election-year political spotlight.
And the man at the helm — acting Veterans Affairs Secretary Sloan Gibson — just joined the department in February.
“I don’t envy him,” Hershel Gober, who twice served as acting VA secretary during President Clinton’s second term, told the Tribune-Review.
“He’s going to have to spend about 20 hours a day there. There is so much he’s got to read, so much he’s got to understand,” Gober said.
As the Department of Veterans Affairs tries to find its way through one of the worst crises in its history, critics inside and outside say nothing less than a cultural change will rescue the embattled agency.
Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned on Friday, two weeks to the day after Undersecretary for Health Robert Petzel retired. Shinseki was forced out by the growing scandal of secret waiting lists at VA hospitals across the country, including one in Pittsburgh that included more than 600 veterans.
But other incidents have shaken the public’s confidence in the federal government’s second-largest department. At least six veterans died and 16 fell ill during an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in Pittsburgh from February 2011 to November 2012, to name just one.
“Having a different secretary is not going to be enough,” said Sen. Bob Casey Jr., D-Scranton. “There are probably others who have to be removed, and even when you remove them and make changes, the key is going to be the result. Can you reduce — substantially — the backlog? Can you restore confidence?”
Changing the way the VA operates won’t be easy, in part because of its size. Its 2,022-page budget lays out more than $150 billion in spending. Its workforce is about the size of Pittsburgh’s population.