Veterans' March On Lansing!!! Protest Governor's Executive Order.

This post is in follow up to my post from a week or so ago about Governor Granholm going too far. I have incorporated that information into the edit of this post, so that all of the information is in one place.

We Veterans are generally a pretty civil bunch. We’ll put up with a considerable amount of crap from our government and almost always take it in stride, being of the belief that stupidity should be suffered while it is sufferable. But what I learned last week had me about at a gasket-blowing, blood-pressure-cuff-rupturing, penny-nail-spitting, profanity-laced tirade. Really, I needed the balance of the day just to cool my boil down enough that I could write a post that someone wouldn’t remove on the spot.

Since 1927, the State of Michigan provides appropriations to Veterans’ Service Organizations to provide the Veterans of Michigan advocacy in obtaining and retaining veteran benefits. On May 5, 2009, the Governor issued Executive Order 2009-22, mandating budget cuts for the current operating year. Due to this order, Veterans’ Service Organizations were cut 25%. This has a severe impact on the ability of Veterans in this state to obtain assistance in applying for benefits, as many of these organizations had to downsize staff and operations.

I originally got wind of Executive Order 2009-22 while perusing Right Michigan’s “Tuesday in the Sphere,” specifically the link to Michigan Partisan’s heads-up that “The State of Michigan is Stripping Veterans of Money and Services.” A brief read-through didn’t do my mindset any favors, and chatting with several of my brothers-in-arms at the VA’s Grand Rapids Outpatient Clinic (I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday morning) didn’t help. What really set me off was finding out that this EO will effectively lay off every single one of the state’s Veterans Services Officers at close of business Friday, May 15th (this includes closing all six of the DAV’s state field offices in Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Grand Rapids, Grayling, Iron Mountain, and Saginaw), essentially consolidating all state veterans’ services at the VA offices in Detroit.

Now for those of you who aren’t that familiar with the process, let me give you an idea of what these service officers do for the Veterans of this state. First, they’re provided by every veterans’ organization in the state (American Legion, AmVets, CWV, DAV, FRA, JVA, MCL, MOPH, PVA, PLAV, VFW, VVA – that’s a lot of acronyms, and I probably left some out). Second, their purpose is to provide assistance to veterans in need; such things as emergency financial assistance, health and pharmacy benefits, burial and memorial benefits, survivors’ benefits, education benefits, home loans and life insurance, vocational rehab training, disability compensation, and various other benefits. Third, they work collaboratively with the Department of Veterans Affairs and other nationally chartered veterans’ organizations to assure that Veterans and their dependents receive the entitlements they deserve for the sacrifices they endured.

The way that this service is typically provided is by assisting the Veteran in question with filling out the necessary paperwork (which is pretty involved where it isn’t downright complicated) and then babysitting the claim all the way through final resolution, which can sometimes take as long as eighteen months (but on average takes six to nine). All of this, mind you, is at no financial cost to the Veteran. In fact, according to the National Association of County Veterans Service Officers, between 75% and 90% of the claims presented to the Veterans Administration each year originate in a county veterans office.

Every single service officer that isn’t directly employed by the VA is a local government employee, usually at the county level. (Veterans’ Employment Specialists are an exception in that they’re normally state employees, but that’s about the only exception that I know of.) This means that every service officer who isn’t a VA employee (and that would be the overwhelming majority of them) is subject to the budget solvency / shenanigans of the state in which they work. Guess what that means for the service officers in Michigan?

So what happened yesterday, when the Governess’ latest cranial-rectal inversioned stupidity became public knowledge, is that a state-full of vets were put on notice that they had to get done whatever they needed to get done by close of business Friday, May 15th, or face the daunting task of driving to Detroit every time they need to get something done. (Actually filing a claim almost always involves face-to-face contact.) Many of these Veterans seeking assistance are disabled, in various ways and to varying degrees, and/or are in not the best of financial situations, so dropping what they’re doing and driving to Detroit (from places as far away as, say, Iron Mountain) isn’t something that happens easily.

About the only thing that I can think of is that Governor Two-Penny is using Veterans (in addition to the disabled, prisoners, the unemployed, state troopers, and families) as human shields to justify asking for another “one time” record-busting tax hike around about September. Apparently, her logic is that we’ll fall for it again, just as we have every other time. Clearly she’s not paying attention to the Michigan TEA Party Movement. Additionally, I’m pretty sure that she’s not aware of just how quickly veterans’ organizations can mobilize when given cause.

In that Michigan Partisan article also is referenced Senate Bill 250, sponsored by State Senator Valde Garcia. Section 707 of this bill proposes to effectively eliminate the state appropriations to the Veterans’ Service Offices and create a state “Directorate of Veterans' Affairs” to afford additional oversight of the approximately four million dollars that the state shells out annually to the service officers so that they can do what they do in support of this state’s Veteran population. Because the existing oversight provided by audited quarterly reports to the Michigan Department of Military and Veteran Affairs just isn’t enough, an extra level of bureaucracy and red tape is a really good idea, and centralized planning, control, and oversight always works so well. Has no one in Lansing heard of the maxim, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?

Of course, there may be something else afoot here.

I recall that, back around late 2005 or early 2006, there was a suggestion to introduce lawyers into the VA’s claim system. Essentially this would work the same as the current SSDI claim system does. The claimant submits an initial claim, which is nearly universally rejected on some stupid ground or another. Then, the claimant seeks out the assistance of an attorney (because that’s the only way an appeal is going to get filed), who agrees to take the case . . . provided he gets a cut of the initial claim payout. This process takes about two years, on average, to resolve any given claim.

So applying this, what the Veterans would get is a bureaucratic, lawyer-driven, absolutely inefficient system to replace one that’s working just fine, thank you. And by “just fine” I mean that a claim gets resolved in a fairly timely fashion (I’ve personally had one resolved as quickly as two weeks) and at no cost to the affected Veteran.

Do I know for sure that there is a plot afoot to “lawyerize” Michigan’s veterans’ claims process? No, not particularly, and I certainly can’t prove it. But I do find the timing of EO 2009-22 and SB 250 to be just a tad suspicious, and I’m just saying. Even so, the more likely probability of this state’s Veterans being used as human shields to justify a tax hike (when Lansing clearly doesn’t have the guts to seriously contain spending) is just as disgusting.

What I also know is that the Veteran population in Michigan has had enough of the state government stupidity. At last night’s monthly meeting of the Kent County Veterans’ Honor Guard I learned that several of the state’s Veterans’ Organizations have organized a full-blown march on Lansing to protest both Executive Order 2009-22 and Senate Bill 250. (This has been in the works since the executive order was issued.) I don’t know what plans any of you may have for Thursday afternoon, but I would certainly appreciate a show of force in support of my brothers-in-arms. The protest rally is planned for Thursday, May 21, 2009, at 3:30 PM on the front steps of the State Capitol Building in Lansing.