mr. kauffman, you are recognized. >> thank you mr. chairman. to the acting secretary, i want to thank you so much for your responding to a concern that was raised by a whistleblower in denver, colorado, that pulling it to a higher level to make sure that there's no conflict of interest. i want to thank you for being so responsive to that. let me also raise an issue of accountability. it's different than what mr. tacano has raised. i'm concerned that if you can relay this as well to the incoming secretary, that at the senior executive service management level, that we have had individuals in these positions who have had multiple negative reports either by gao or vaoig that have never been cleaned up. yet, these people are allowed to remain there. so, specifically, we are going to be opening a va hospital in aurora, colorado, this saturday. the individual that was responsible for the last person there in charge of the project from the va standpoint in terms of construction management, that led to a billion dollars in cost overruns. a project that

mr. kauffman pointed out. if you had issues with your performance or your organization's performance, do not hesitate to take action. whether that's for misconduct or restructuring to get better performance to serve veterans. >> can you clarify that? was this for cost, performance issues or efficiency? >> this is organization. it's for organizational efficiency. we're talking about when you have an office that's not performing the way it needs to, that doesn't always mean that a person was committing this conduct of some sort. this means we're not getting the performance or the efficiency out that was organization we need. sometimes it requires a change in leadership. >> i'm sure we are going to be re-visiting this issue to see in six months what are we seeing. to be clear about what is -- how are you measuring that performance? what are you doing to ensure there's better performance? be transparent about what that is. there's a lot of concern. we are hearing a lot of back channel about morale impact. you lose