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Governor’s bill changes state funding of Iowa counties’ VA offices
Governor Kim Reynolds’ bill to restructure state funding for county veterans services has cleared one committee in the Iowa Senate and is eligible for debate in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Each Iowa county currently gets $10,000 to pay a veterans service officer. The governor says only a third of Iowa’s nearly 178,000 veterans are signed up for the benefits they earned and her alternative ties funding to the county’s performance in signing veterans up for benefits.
Dan Gannon with Disabled American Veterans supports the bill. He said Iowa can and should do much better at connecting veterans with the compensation they deserve. “I think by better use of the funds, appropriating the funds correctly, accountability, and holding people accountable will get us where we want to get,” Gannon said.
Michael Mortensen, legislative liaison for the Iowa Association of County Veterans Services, said most counties are opposed to the bill because one-third of them would lose funding based on what he said is “inaccurate data.” Mortensen said they’d support incentives created with new funding. “We’re very much in favor of a lot of the ideas behind the bill, but the actual way of getting to it, and this really just hammering down from the state, does not equal out into better services to our veterans,” he says, “and that’s what we’re most concerned about.”
Winnebago County Veterans Affairs Director Mary Lou Kleveland said the governor’s plan does not recognize that not all veterans qualify for a pension or disability compensation. “We have wonderful veterans who have served maybe two years or four years and they came out of the military without any problems. They don’t have hearing loss, they don’t have tinnitus, they weren’t injured while they were in service, so they’re not going to ever be eligible for disability compensation. That doesn’t mean we don’t serve them,” she said. “We may help them with VA Health Care. We may help them with…an Iowa Veterans Trust Fund if they have special needs.”
Veterans must serve on active duty for at least 90 days to receive a pension.
The plan Governor Reynolds unveiled her proposal in January would see the top third of counties with a high percentage of veterans who are signed up for VA compensation get $15,000 annually from the state for veterans service officers. The bottom third would get $5,000 and the middle third would get $10,000 — if more of the county’s veterans are signed up for VA benefits.
(Reporting by Katarina Sostaric, Iowa Public Radio in Des Moines, additional reporting in Forest City by A.J. Taylor, KIOW)
