VA’s carrot-and-stick plan: Raise salaries, limit appeal rights for its executives

The Obama administration has proposed a carrot-and-stick approach to revamping the senior executive cadre at the Department of Veterans Affairs, holding out the prospect of higher salaries while proposing further limits on executives’ rights to appeal disciplinary actions.

A proposal sent to Capitol Hill seeks to put into law an idea the department raised recently to shift its senior executives into a separate set of policies covering VA medical personnel, called Title 38. Those policies allow for appeals of discipline only through internal channels and not to an outside body such as the Merit Systems Protection Board.