Congresswoman Louise Slaughter is expressing concern that the Department of Veterans Affairs may cut funding for various projects including one in Rochester to make up for an over-budget project in Colorado.
The Fairport Democrat is worried that funding could be diverted from a long-planned VA outpatient clinic in the Rochester area, and she says she has written to the VA Secretary about that concern.
“What we’re insisting on right now is that they use the money, already allocated, for the Rochester clinic and build it. We are grievously underserved. With this new clinic… we hope for it to be is a lot of ambulatory care, they would be able to do a lot of tests that the present clinic can’t do that would keep (veterans) from having to make the trips to the hospital.”
Slaughter says that more than 70,000 veterans in the Greater Rochester area already have to travel long distances to reach a VA hospital and the new regional clinic will help with that situation.
“We’ve written to Secretary McDonald telling him that we’ve been hearing that they might make some changes and not do the smaller facilities in many states in order to help pay for this boondoggle in Denver,” Slaughter said.
