Official: Veterans were not forgotten

Regional director defends office on eve of federal hearing

Speaking out for the first time on the issue, the director of the Oakland VA regional office said Monday that benefit claims found stuffed in a file cabinet were not mishandled and that no vet was forgotten.

Director Julianna Boor’s staunch defense of her office comes two days before a congressional hearing that will examine allegations of mismanagement of veterans’ compensation at Oakland.

Boor said that the 13,184 claims located in 2012 — some of them dating back to the mid1990s — were merely duplicates of processed claims. Boor admitted that the office’s recordkeeping had been a problem but that the process since has been streamlined with a paperless digital system .

Boor, however, also said that a complete list of those claims does not exist.

Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R- Oroville, has called for the list to be released to an independent auditor for review to ensure that no veterans or surviving spouses were ignored by the VA — something that Oakland whistleblowers say occurred.

“I wish we could do that,” Boor said. “I wish I could just wave a magic wand and make it appear. We were not keeping an audit when we did the review. We were just so focused on making sure the veterans were taken care of properly and make sure that nobody was left behind.”

On Wednesday, the Oakland and Philadelphia offices will be under a microscope on Capitol Hill when the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs looks into scathing VA Office of Inspector General reports that were critical of both sites.

In a statement, Rep. Jeff Miller, the committee chairman, said they will attempt to determine what went wrong at