WASHINGTON — Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) introduced legislation on Thursday to ensure that reports from the watchdog at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs alerts the public about what it finds at VA facilities.

The legislation, an amendment to the bill that authorizes the nation’s defense, is cosponsored by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). The amendment  requires that any report or audit from the Office of the Inspector General to the Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs be made public within three days. The measure includes protection against the release of personal information that is already shielded by law.

The measure was prompted by the failure of the VA Office of the Inspector General to disclose the results of a report it made on dangerous overprescription of opiates at the VA Medical Center in Tomah, Wis. – practices that resulted in the death of at least one Wisconsin veteran. The resulting scandal was the subject of a joint field hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC), chaired by Senator Johnson and the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee in Tomah in March.

Senator Johnson said the amendment was a continuation of his effort to ensure that no family suffers the mistreatment of a loved one as a result of VA negligence. “This is a matter of life or death,” said Johnson, citing a Wisconsin woman, daughter of a veteran who died due to substandard care at the Tomah VA facility. She told the senator that she would never have taken her father to the facility had she known what was in the unreleased Office of the Inspector General’s report about the medical center.

“In other words,” said Johnson, “if the Office of the Inspector General had published a report so the public understood the problems at the Tomah VA, this Wisconsin veteran would not have been exposed to such mistreatment.”

“The vast majority of the medical professionals caring for veterans in our VA facilities are dedicated and caring,” said Senator Johnson. “We owe it to them to expose those instances where VA care is not up to standard. Even more, we owe our veterans, the finest among us, the best of care. That requires inspector general reports to be made public.”

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