By Kathy Chaffin
kchaffin@salisbury post.com
Rep. Mel Watt said he was surprised to see an article in Wednesday’s Post quoting a letter Veterans Affairs Secretary James B. Peake sent to Sen. Elizabeth Dole.
With the exception of one change, Watt said he received the same letter from Peake saying that he has asked his staff to review and consider concerns raised about proposed changes to eliminate emergency, surgical and inpatient services at the Hefner VA Medical Center.
Though the letter was dated Wednesday (Oct. 15), Watt said it arrived at his Charlotte office via e-mail at 8:47 a.m. Thursday.
“I can’t understand how she got the letter before I got the letter,” he said. “It don’t smell right. This is supposed to be on the level and not about politics.”
Dole’s office released copies of three letters to the Post on Wednesday night: two dated Oct. 1 and Oct. 8 expressing her concerns about the changes and Peake’s Oct. 15 response dated for Wednesday. Dole’s letters were identical, and her representative said the later one was a followup to the earlier letter.
The only difference in Peake’s letter to Dole and his letter to Watt was that he referred to the dates of their letters sent to him. Watt sent a letter to Peake on Sept. 22 addressing his concerns about the plan to eliminate inpatient, emergency and surgical services as part of a transition to a long-term care and mental health facility for veterans.
Watt, who is running for his ninth term as the 12th District representative, said he’s not upset that he received the same letter as Dole. “That happens all the time,” he said.
What does upset him, he said, is that he wrote to Peake first and didn’t get a response until the morning after Dole’s office had sent out a press release with the letter. “It seems to me that Dole is trying to use your newspaper to make it sound like this was a response to her letter,” he said.
Watt said he was preparing a followup letter to Peake, thanking him for his response and asking for two things. “No. 1, I want to see the plan, which is what I requested on Sept. 22,” he said.
And No. 2, Watt said he wants to know what Peake is going to do between now and Nov. 15, the date he specified in the letter as the deadline for his staff to provide him with the results of the review.
“Is it just full speed ahead?” he asked. “And is this just a political response to get Liddy Dole through the election? I think these people are playing games, and some of this has to do with politics.
“They’d love to get beyond the election and create a firestorm in the middle of the election. I think it’s a little late for that.”
Watt said Carolyn L. Adams, director of the Hefner VA, traveled to his Washington office to talk with him about the proposed changes one day last week. Though she discussed the plan for the Hefner VA with his staff, Watt said he did not talk with her.
“It doesn’t seem to me to be a productive use of my time,” he said, “to be sitting down talking to somebody verbally about a proposal that I have not yet seen in writing … Before I started fussing at anybody about what they are proposing, I wanted to see what it is that they are proposing.”
Watt said at a Salisbury-Rowan NAACP candidates forum Wednesday night he suspects some Congressional leaders knew about the plans for the Hefner VA before they were announced in a Sept. 19 press release from Veterans Affairs.
Sen. Richard Burr, the ranking Republican on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, was with Peake when he spoke to about 50 people at a March 20 veterans round table held by Watt at VFW Post 3006 on Brenner Avenue. When he heard they were going to be in the area to visit the new community-based Veterans Affairs clinic in Charlotte, Watt invited them to drop by the round table.
Peake spoke briefly of his plans as the new Veterans Affairs director that day. “He didn’t mention anything about any major reorganization at that meeting,” Watt said.
Watt said it was inconceivable to him that Veterans Affairs would have announced the plans without Peake having consulted with Burr. “And if that was being done with Sen. Burr, I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t have raised the possibility with Sen. Dole, who lives right here in Salisbury,” he said.
A spokesman for Burr’s office said he was aware of a study of VA services to see if there were ways to improve the health-care delivery for veterans, but did not know of the specifics of the proposed changes at the Hefner VA Medical Center until the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee was briefed on Sept. 18, the day before the news was released to the media.
When asked if Dole knew about the plans before the official announcement, a spokesman for her office said Veterans Affairs informed her last spring that it was conducting a study to determine how to better serve North Carolina veterans.
“But the VA did not share the findings of the study with her until it had already been reported by the press,” the spokesman said. “Senator Dole has criticized the VA for being too secretive with this process. Senator Dole is pleased the VA is reviewing their plan before moving forward, as she requested.”