Ex-VA exec says he wasn’t told hospital cost

A former VA executive who was criticized by Congress for massive cost overruns at a new Colorado veterans hospital says he was never told the price had ballooned to more than $1.7 billion.

In a rare interview, Glenn Haggstrom, the former top construction official for the Veterans Affairs Department, tells The Associated Press he was astounded by the price of the hospital under construction outside Denver.

He says the last estimate he heard from the builder before he was removed from the project was $890 million.

Haggstrom says he bears some responsibility for the problems because of his job duties, but he says others made mistakes too. He declined to name anyone.

Haggstrom retired in 2015 amid an internal VA investigation into what went wrong.

The hospital is scheduled for completion next year.