Veterans Muster For Budget Battle
In the midst of two global wars on terror, Mecklenburg County is considering budget cuts that would completely eliminate funding for its Veterans Service Office, forcing the agency to shutter its doors and potentially leaving thousands of benefit claims filed by local veterans lost in a maze of bureaucratic red tape.
“It couldn’t come at a worse time,” said Robert Weeks, director of Mecklenburg’s Veterans Service Office. “We have [veterans] returning from multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, completely exhausted mentally and physically, looking for support and help. I’m not sure what they’ll do if we have to close.”
Weeks and the Veterans Service Office (VSO) might find out as soon as July 1, which is when the agency would have to close its doors if a proposal currently under consideration comes to fruition.
Faced with massive shortfalls for both the current-year and coming fiscal-year budgets, County Manager Harry Jones’s executive leadership team has recommended eliminating the VSO, part of the ongoing budget slashing that is hitting all county departments.
Jones won’t unveil his final recommended budget to county commissioners until May 18, and it might not include eliminating 100 percent of the VSO’s nearly $1-million budget. But the agency has been told to prepare for the worse. Its staff of 11 counselors, one administrative assistant and Weeks have all been issued their official reduction-in-force papers, a nice euphemism for layoff notices.
The rationale driving closure of the VSO, which receives nearly all of its funding in county dollars, is that the services it provides are not mandated or even, some argue, essential. Veterans can file their own claims – everything from VA medical care, physical and mental disability compensation and home-loan guarantees, to pension allotments and death benefits for surviving spouses and children – without ever stepping foot in the local VSO office.
But filing claims and filing them right are two entirely different animals, said Tom Davis, a disabled Vietnam veteran and retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who serves on the Mecklenburg County Veterans Council.
One slip in the claims process, a missed deadline, or an unreturned form, and a veteran could easily find himself staring at a denied claim, wondering what steps to take for recourse, Davis said. Veterans, particularly ones with severe disabilities, or elderly ones who served in World War II, along in many cases with their widows, need help winding their way through the serpentine process and layers of bureaucracy that’s part and parcel of filing any government claim.
“To say it’s not an essential service, that’s not accurate,” Davis said. “There are so many things that can go wrong in the process. You’ve got to go through the hoops, and there are a lot hoops. The VSO knows what to do and gets it done.”
Weeks, a former Army paratrooper, said there are nearly 3,000 claims currently in the federal Department of Veterans Affairs’ pipeline that the local VSO has helped process. He’s unsure what will happen to those claims if the agency is forced to shut its doors, but suspects many of them could go denied if proper follow-up isn’t monitored.
1 2
We need your help! If you like PunditHouse, please consider donating to us. Even $5 a month can make a difference!
Short URL: https://pundithouse.com/?p=1875
