Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

20. Department of Veterans Affairs · Minor

Assess VHA facility misalignment and rising infrastructure costs

Not started

646 20. Department of Veterans Affairs

“Assess the misalignment of VHA facilities and rising infrastructure costs. The VHA operates 172 inpatient medical facilities nationally that are an average of 60 years old. Some of these facilities are underutilized and inadequately staffed.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    No assessment of the alignment of the VHA inpatient footprint was published or commissioned. The statutory vehicle for exactly this exercise, the Asset and Infrastructure Review Commission of VA MISSION Act Title II, lapsed in 2022 and was not revived. What the window contains instead is spending on the existing estate and case-by-case realignments: a record $4.8 billion FY 2026 Non-Recurring Maintenance program announced 2026-01-28, an extra $800 million in 2025, quarterly project lists, environmental-impact notices for relocating the San Antonio and Reno medical centers, and the West Los Angeles lease terminations. Rising infrastructure cost is being paid, not assessed.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Negative search and leads, 2026-09-01:

  • Federal Register API, exact phrase "asset and infrastructure" with conditions[agencies][]=veterans-affairs-department from 2025-01-20 — zero documents.
  • Corpus, every VA Federal Register notice since 2025-01-20 read by title. The facility items are notices of intent to prepare an EIS for relocating the San Antonio VAMC (2025-02-20) and a programmatic EIS for the Reno VAMC (2025-06-20), a draft programmatic environmental assessment for the Build-To-Suit Lease Program (2025-04-29), and an enhanced-use lease at Kerrville (2025-11-28). Individual projects, not a footprint assessment, so they are leads here.
  • news.va.gov press releases on infrastructure spending: https://news.va.gov/press-room/144652/ (2026-01-28, $4.8bn FY26 NRM), https://news.va.gov/press-room/va-to-spend-additional-800m-on-infrastructure-improvements-this-year/ (2025-07-23), and the FY26 quarterly project announcements (2026-05-11, 2026-07-20).
  • The 2025-12-15 VHA reorganization (https://news.va.gov/press-room/va-launches-veterans-health-administration-reorganization/) rests on Inspector General and GAO reviews of VHA’s management structure, not of its estate.
Action
other
Object
VHA inpatient medical facility footprint
ID
1769