NCA: Arlington will be back
Steve L. Muro, under secretary for VA Memorial Affairs addressed Legionnaires during the 93rd National Convention in Minneapolis.

NCA: Arlington will be back

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration  doesn’t have oversight over Arlington National Cemetery. But it hopes  to have some influence over the sacred cemetery’s administrative  overhaul.Arlington was rocked with a scandal in 2010 that included graves being  mismarked and unmarked, burial urns being unearthed and dumped out;  millions of dollars also were mismanaged. The cemetery’s executives  were removed from their positions, and Kathryn Condon was named  executive director of the Army National Cemeteries Program, which  oversees long-term planning and day-to-day operations of Arlington.  And the man in charge of VA’s national cemetery system believes the  changes made will correct the problems Arlington faced.“We do not run Arlington National Cemetery,” Steve L. Muro, under  secretary for VA’s Memorial Affairs, told The American Legion on  Saturday during the organization’s 93rd National Convention in  Minneapolis. “The superintendent (Patrick K. Hallinan) used to be the  director of (NCA’s) field ops. The deputy superintendent (James  Gemmell) used to run Ft. Snelling National Cemetery. They are staffing  up from NCA, and we’re going to make sure they got back on their feet  and do what they need to do.”Muro, who overseas NCA’s 131 cemeteries, said the agency is in its  largest expansion since the Civil War. And in the midst of that, NCA  continues to receive high marks from its customers. It received a  rating of 94 in the American Customer Satisfaction survey, the highest  of any organization in 2010 and the fourth time in 10 years it’s  received the top rating.Muro said 70.4 percent of its employees are veterans, tops among all  federal agencies, and that 12 percent of the agency’s procurements are  given to veteran-owned businesses.