Noncompetitive pay and benefits are resulting in critical shortages of law enforcement officers across the Department of Veterans Affairs, an AFGE local leader testified before a Senate committee last week.
More than half of all VA facilities have severe staffing shortages of police officers – the most frequently reported shortage among all occupations in the department, the VA Office of the Inspector General reported last year.
“On the ground in VA facilities, the shortages referenced by OIG hinder the ability of officers to perform their duties,” AFGE Local 1699 Vice President Matthew Leffler said in testimony before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee on May 13. “In some facilities, expensive new security screening equipment sits unused because there are not enough officers to operate this equipment. There are other facilities where only one or two officers are available to respond to emergencies.”
Leffler has spent the past 20 years in federal law enforcement – four years as a military police officer with the U.S. Marine Corps, 10 years as a civilian police officer with the Marine Corps, and for the past six years as a senior police officer at the Wilkes-Barre VA Medical Center in Pennsylvania.
Like Leffler, 90 percent of the 2,500 police officers AFGE represents at the VA are veterans themselves who want to continue serving their country. But morale among officers is suffering due to the persistent staffing shortages, he said.
Non-competitive pay is one of the main challenges facing the VA in trying to recruit and retain police officers – yet the Trump administration wants to cut their pay even further by downgrading their positions from GS-6/7 to GS-5, retroactive to Oct. 1, 2025.
This position downgrade would cost already underpaid VA officers thousands of dollars a year. A GS-5, Step 1 police officer in Topeka, Kansas, would earn $41,400 a year, while the same officer would start off making $65,374 annually working for the city’s police force. The disparity is even greater in West Haven, Conn., where a newly hired city police officer can earn between $74,810 and $88,484 annually, compared to $48,000 for a VA police officer in West Haven hired at the GS-5, Step 1 level.
AFGE and the National Veterans Affairs Council strongly support H.R. 8010, the “VA Police Recruitment and Retention Act,” introduced by Rep. Tim Kennedy (D-N.Y.), which would prohibit the downgrades.
“Severe staffing shortages, low retention, and poor morale require attention and solutions, not downgrades in positions and pay,” Leffler said.
Leffler also called on Congress to pass H.R. 3226, the “Law Enforcement Officers (LEO) Equity Act,” introduced by Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), which would extend enhanced retirement benefits provided to most federal law enforcement officers to police officers at the VA and other federal agencies who currently aren’t eligible.
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Noncompetitive pay and benefits are resulting in critical shortages of law enforcement officers across the Department of Veterans Affairs, an AFGE local leader testified before a Senate committee last week.
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