A western Wisconsin VA medical facility was criticized in an inspector general report last summer and a watchdog is claiming the state’s Democratic U.S. senator had the information and did nothing about it.

The Green Bay Gazette reports:

The report by the VA inspector general, a copy of which was obtained by USA TODAY, noted that two practitioners at the center were among the highest prescribers of opiates in a multistate region — at “considerable variance” compared with most opioid prescribers. That, the report said, raised “potentially serious concerns.”

A whistleblower learned in November U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin had the report “for months” and did nothing about it.

Former Tomah VA employee Ryan Honl “repeatedly emailed her office asking that she do something to help the veterans at the center” to no avail.

“All we ask is that our senator publicly support our desire to have an open forum rather than remain silent publicly, which is what the VA does in hiding reports from the public,” Honl wrote to Baldwin’s staff in December.

The senator’s office wouldn’t talk about what happened between the time it received the report in August and last week when she congratulated the Department of Veterans Affairs for “reviewing the allegations.”

“It is very disconcerting that a United States Senator would have been able to read the report and yet government still has allowed the Tomah leadership to ruin lives and run good doctors and physicians out of the facility,” Honl, the whistleblower, wrote in a Nov. 24 communication to the senator’s office.

“Do you think that’s proper that a nurse practitioner … is ranked the number one prescriber of opiates out of 3,206 physicians in the (region)?”

Right Wisconsin reports the situation was so bad, a veteran died as a result of the opiate abuse at the facility.

“At its core, this looks like gross incompetency from Sen. Baldwin and her staff. But the fact that Slack reports that Baldwin’s office told VA whistleblower Ryan Honl not to talk to the press as he was urging action is quite revealing of a motive to keep the matter quiet,” the news site concludes.