Reading the report from the inspector general at the Department of Veterans Affairs that blasts the lease deal awarded to a developer to build a new health care facility near Butler, it’s difficult to know where to start. The 55-page report by the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General points to major failings in the acquisition of land, noted inadequate vetting of the developer and an improper financial analysis that led to a questionable build-to-suit lease deal.

A good place to start is at the beginning — the acquisition of land. The inspector general’s report explains that the VA normally takes a 2-step approach, meaning the VA decides what piece of land is best, then later selects the best contractor to construct the building — with the VA selling, essentially transfering, the land to the developer.

The land that scored highest on the VA’s rating system was Deshon Woods, which was owned by Butler Township. Someone at the VA thought there was a problem with buying the land because the township could only sell through a bidding process. So, the VA opted to go with a one-step process, which saw a Westar-connected company buy Deshon Woods at well above the appraised price, then present the project as a package deal to the VA. This one-step approach, the report concludes, gave Westar an unfair advantage because of the appeal of Deshon Woods, which abuts the VA’s medical center property.

There were other problems highlighted in the report, including a failure to investigate Westar. Westar claimed to be “100 percent veteran owned,” which gave it an advantage in the VA scoring for evaluating developers. But the inspector general’s report revealed that that claim was false, and concluded it didn’t take much investigation to learn this information. The VA and its broker failed to check.

Along similar lines, the VA failed to check the background of the developer and the partnering general contractor; it relied on the broker.

Had there been an effort to verify claims by Westar, the report concludes the VA would have seen that the company was not likely capable of managing the Butler project. The report faults the VA and its broker for failure to investigate a variety of claims made by Westar regarding its history, ownership makeup and financial strength.

Finally, the report took aim at the part of the deal that had many people scratching their heads, that it was a better deal for the VA to have Westar build and manage the facility, with the VA making annual lease payments. The inspector general’s report noted the financial analysis was done for 15 years instead of 20. It also found that the developer’s cost estimate to build the facility was overstated, thus tilting toward the conclusion that the lease deal was most cost-effective. It was not.

Finally, the report found that the VA did not listen to complaints from a losing developer about suspicious aspects of the Westar group — notably that a key person at Westar had admitted to embezzling funds from a previous employer. Had the VA looked into those complaints, the ill-fated and improperly evaluated project could have been stopped earlier.

In fact, given all the missteps, failures to follow normal procedure and raised by the report, it seems a congressional investigation is warranted.

But the biggest, and first, mistake was the failure of the VA to buy the land. The VA could have bought the Deshon Woods land, and the inspector’s general report explains that it would have been able to do so easily. If it had done so, the VA would own the land it preferred for the new medical center building. Instead, the land, which has already seen all the Deshon Woods trees cut down and partial preparation for construction, is held by a now distressed company and is very much in limbo.

The VA still wants to build the new medical center building and has eliminated Westar from consideration, for obvious reasons. But regardless of which developer wins the contract, there should be efforts to secure the Deshon Woods for the project, by legal efforts to require the owner to sell to the VA at an appropriate market price, which includes the development work already invested, less any income from the timber removed.

It would be a shame to see the VA build elsewhere, especially when the Deshon Woods site has been stripped of trees and is partially prepared — and sits right next to the main VA campus.