Alabama closing VA centers
Beretverde sends us a link to the news from Alabama that the state is cutting funding for 17 Veterans Centers while the troops are coming home;
Because of cuts in state funding the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs is closing veterans service offices in 17 counties on June 1, 2012.
These are places that veterans can get help applying for disability compensation, pension, and educational assistance even counseling on other benefits.
Duke Martin of the Blue Star Salute Foundation says the process can be difficult and complex for newly returning veterans and aging veterans who never sought help before.“Most things that are associated with the government through paperwork are very complicated and slow,” said Martin.
Starting June 1, 2012 some veterans could be forced to travel much farther for help regardless of the problems they are facing. Martin thinks the situation is unacceptable.
Like I’ve been saying, no matter which party is running things, the first thing they cut is veterans’ benefits (the governor of Alabama is a Republican). Every. Time.
Category: Veteran Health Care
“We do have a large population of veterans in the State of Alabama. We have over 420,000 veterans in Alabama’s 67 counties,” said Robert Horton, Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs.
Hmmm…If I were a politician, I would look at it like 420,000 votes. Shame on Alabama.
What Beretverde said: Shame on Alabama.
I live in Huntsville and being on the scene this was made to sound worse than it is. The closing centers are some of the small, rural offices scattered around the state. Veterans need to travel to Birmingham or Montgomery for just about everything anyway and these outlying offices that did not have a permament staff were expensive and a product of the previous Democratic administrations. We veterans know if our country is going to survive the waste and inefficiency has got to go and we will suck it up and travel to Birmingham and/or Montgomery, as I will do (all the way to Montgomery – 4 hour drive) on the 13th, if that is what it takes to do our bit. Alabama is by and large a very positive place for Vets and place where if you are wearing an old ball cap from a previous command people often come up to you with their children and make it a point to thank you for your service. This article, in my humble opinion, intentionally took a left lean, not that it is surprising. Most respectfully…
This isn’t entirely accurate. They are closing Veteran Service Officer offices, not actual VAs. The VSOs here just basically fill out the paperwork to get you service connected for disabilities. Either way, you shouldn’t go to the state for that anyway, but go to one of the VSOs (TAL, VFW, DAV etc.) So, it isn’t actual medical facilities from the article, just the guys that help you apply for a disability, and the state doesn’t want to pay for that when the VSOs do it for free.
In Minnesota you have CVSOs (County Veterans Service Officers) that perform the same function as those in Alabama. Fortunately, there is no plan to do the same here, as they are doing in Alabama. As TSO says, the VSOs already do that, but I don’t think they were designed to handle that capacity of claim filing. That’s what the CVSO is for and I don’t think the Alabama American Legion/VFW/DAV, etc. is going to hire the personnel required to handle the influx of claims and continue to do it for free. So, you end up with slower turnaround on claims filed and a longer wait time to file claims, not to mention when the VSO of your choice meets with the VA to go over your individual claim and percentage determination. I’m not blaming the various VSOs, but it is a rather large undertaking and things will slip.
This is a tough one. I can understand the need to save money but as a civil servant myself, I understand the need to serve the public. As a veteran, I tend to lean toward serving the veterans.
All well said but in the end Veterans are best served when the VA turnaround improves, and that is a Federal issue. Personally if I am ever called to public office one of my long standing central tenets is that all “Honorably Discharged” veterans and current active duty personnel should have a $25K federal income tax deduction in addition to any other standard or itemized deduction. I believe this would be a totally deserved and justified benefit and serve and a very attactive incentive to serve. Ah, just my 2c’s.