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DENVER — Leaders of the Veterans Administration said the cost mismanagement for the hospital project in Aurora happened because they didn’t listen to the main contractor on the project.

FOX31 Denver broke the news on Twitter Tuesday that the costs to complete the nearly half built facility is climbing to $1.73 billion, five times more than when it was first proposed.

U.S. Representative Mike Coffman said getting more in federal funds to complete the building of the VA Medical Center in Aurora will be a hard sell to Congress, but he is sure the hospital will be built.

Coffman, whose district encompasses the hospital project, will introduce legislation to increase the spending cap to $1.7 billion and it will also strip the VA from managing any hospital project in the future. “It’s a horrible situation and when you think about it, these are dollars that are cost overruns that are not going to take care of our nation’s veterans,” Coffman told FOX31 Denver’s Tak Landrock from his Washington, D.C. office.

TAK LANDROCKRanking Democrats on the House Subcommittee on VA Oversight and Investigations are also demanding the VA forego managing its own construction projects, something the VA has been fighting.

The Aurora Hospital project is the only project being managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. The change in management happened after the main contractors walked off the job in December for a week. Part of the resolution for Kiewit-Turner to go back to work was to get the Corps to manage the project.

Coffman, a retired US Marine Corp Veteran, has been a vocal critic of the Veterans Administration. He is now calling for an independent investigation into how the hospital project got out of control. “We’ve got to hold those in the Veterans administration and hold them accountable, make them accountable for what’s happened,” he said.

A 2013 Government Accountability Office report found the VA medical center projects in Colorado, Las Vegas, Orlando and New Orleans were all years behind schedule and severely over budget, with a total cost increase of $1.5 billion.

In December the VA along with the Army Corps of Engineers teamed to do its own investigation into the Aurora hospital project, but Coffman doesn’t trust the VA to do its own probe and would like the GAO or the Office of Inspector General to research the cost overruns.

Coffman wants to see if there was anything criminally done in connection the Colorado project.