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Kevin Nicholson, a state veterans board member and potential U.S. Senate candidate, didn’t directly respond to safety concerns critics raised to him about Wisconsin’s largest veterans home, a review of his emails shows.
MADISON - A state’s veterans board member and potential U.S. Senate candidate didn’t directly respond to safety concerns that critics raised to him about Wisconsin’s largest veterans home over the past four years, a Journal Sentinel review of his emails shows.
The first documented action on King home taken by former Marine Kevin Nicholson is a request he made in March for a report on the state home in Waupaca County, which followed months of critical news stories about it.
Veterans issues are playing a major role in the 2018 race, in which U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (DWis.) has already faced criticism for not doing enough to look into the over-prescription of painkillers at the federal Veterans Affairs facility in Tomah.
Now, critics are questioning whether Nicholson, a member of the state Department of Veterans Affairs board, did enough to look into claims of poor care for King’s nearly 700 residents.
Nicholson didn’t attend a Veterans Affairs board meeting at King in July 2016 or respond to emails with concerns about the home going back to at least February 2013, according to emails released to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel under the state’s open records law.
“Only after Tammy Baldwin released a federal report listing deficiencies at Wisconsin Veterans Home at King did ... Nicholson care about the poor treatment of Wisconsin veterans,” said state Democratic Party spokeswoman Gillian Drummond.
Starting in April 2016, Baldwin sent a series of letters to federal regulators urging them to investigate conditions at King, including one letter that resulted in a report this spring that found a resident had fallen out of a bed and suffered a skull fracture. The week of the report’s release, Nicholson made his request for the report on King conditions at a veterans board meeting.
Nicholson finished a four-year term on the Veterans Affairs board on May 1 but remains on the panel until a replacement can be
appointed. The volunteer board advises agency leadership on veterans issues.
In a statement, Nicholson acknowledged not visiting King, though he did attend a 2015 meeting at the state’s Union Grove veterans home. A former Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nicholson called it his “mission to do everything I can” for veterans in need and said he emphasized jobs for veterans while on the board.
“Multiple audits ...
show that Wisconsin’s veterans homes are high quality,” Nicholson said in a statement. “When mistakes were made, I communicated with leadership to make sure issues were addressed appropriately.”
Nicholson didn’t provide specific examples of that communication beyond saying he had spoken with then-state veteran affairs secretary John Scocos.
In February 2013, Nicholson and other board members received an email from “concerned families of veterans at King” describing worries about the removal of door locks on rooms.
“Residents are at the mercy of anyone who wishes to enter their room,” the email reads, arguing staff couldn’t track every visitor to the King campus.
There is no record of a response from Nicholson.
The state has long used King as a way to get money for other veterans homes and programs with long-term funding challenges.
In May, the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau reported that between 2003 and 2016, the state shifted $55 million from the King home to accounts that don’t directly benefit it. Those transfers happened under both Democratic and Republican administrations, including more than $12 million while Nicholson was on the veterans board.
Nicholson responded by pointing out that King’s operating funding increased to $149.9 million in the two-year budget that just ended, up from $125.9 million in the 2011’13 budget.
In November, federal officials lowered the ratingfor one of the facilities at King to 4 out of 5 stars after a 94-year-old resident died with no CPR by King staff. That led to an “immediate jeopardy” finding by federal regulators for a provider lapse causing “serious injury, harm, impairment, or death to a resident.”
In December, officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services confirmed that King workers had mishandled highly flammable liquid oxygen and then were told not to document the incident.
In February, Walker appointed Dan Zimmerman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, as state veterans affairs secretary to replace Scocos.
State officials respond to the CPR case by pointing out federal Veterans Affairs regulators separately chose not to cite King for that incident. In a June memo to the veterans board, Zimmerman said that no CPR was called for because the resident showed signs of rigor mortis and couldn’t have been revived.
The federal ratings for the King home also remain higher than the average for other nursing home facilities in Wisconsin and nationwide, veterans officials say.
Baldwin’s role in conditions at the Tomah veterans facility came under scrutiny after Marine Corps veteran Jason Simcakoski died there in August 2014 as a result of “mixed drug toxicity.” Between April and June 2014, Baldwin wrote letters to veterans officials in Tomah and Washington asking for investigations into the abuse of opioids linked to the facility.
But Baldwin took no action between Aug. 29, 2014, when her office received a report documenting the overprescribing of opioids at Tomah, and January 2015, when the Center for Investigative Reporting revealed the circumstances of Simcakoski’s death.
For Nicholson and others on the state veterans board, the most prolific critic of King was Rick deMoya, a former veterans division administrator for the state with a long and contentious relationship with his former agency.
Between 2013 and 2016, Nicholson and the board received multiple emails from deMoya detailing problems at King, open records show. In an interview, deMoya said he never heard from Nicholson.