VA officials describe new controls and training after OIG audit of incentive payments

Veterans Affairs officials told a House subcommittee in July 2025 that the department has implemented and will expand procedural controls intended to improve governance of recruitment, relocation and retention incentives.

Tracey Thuritt, identified in the hearing as chief human capital officer for the VA's Office of Human Resources and Administration, said VA "began requiring annual certification of the incentive," adopted a standard form to capture legally required information and aligned the use of 3R incentives with shortage and hard-to-fill positions. She told the committee that VA is "tracking unfulfilled service obligations, improving coordination of debt collection and enforcing debt collection, and reviewing incentives annually and terminating them in a timely manner when they are no longer needed."

Thuritt described additional measures at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) level, including programmatic quarterly monitoring, uniform checklists, templates, training on documentation for succession plans and strengthened technical review processes. She said VHA is "creating oversight plans and a strengthened technical review program to assess every incentive for technical adherence" and that specific performance metrics will be tied to operational and human resources leadership.

David Perry, chief officer for workforce management and consulting at VHA, told the subcommittee the department is shifting responsibility for earlier review to compensation teams within VISNs so reviews occur on the front end rather than after payments are made. "We agree where the VISN is needed to do a more proactive approach, we are shifting that responsibility over to the compensation aspect of the VISN to do that on the front end versus the back end," Perry said. He also described delegations of authority that typically place recommending officials at the medical center director level and approving officials at VISN or network director levels depending on incentive size.

Officials told members the VA updated departmental policy in 2020 to align practice with regulation, introduced standard forms (referred to in testimony as Form 10,016 for recruitment/relocation and Form 10,017 for retention) and said they will enforce a one-year recertification requirement for retention incentives. VA witnesses said they will work toward greater consistency across VISNs and that national-level oversight will act as a second-level check.

Committee members sought details on how the breach-of-agreement and debt collection processes are escalated; Thuritt and Perry described a chain in which waivers and repayment requests move up supervisory chains and, in limited cases, to the Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Administration. VA officials committed to provide requested workforce and appointment-cancellation data to the committee for follow-up oversight. No formal actions were taken at the hearing.