Report

Meeting at Building 9, VAMC Campus

• Call to order – 09:30, Invocation – Pledge of Allegiance
• Greetings: Recognition of visitors and guests
• Announcements – Jerry Kyser, Chair; Mike Rivard, Vice Chair
• Introducing Brent Thelen, the new director of the St. Cloud VA.
• Introducing Joe Schmitt, the National Finance Director for the VA’s Office of Finance, which handles the VA’s Debt Management Center.
• Introducing Bill Jesperson, a supervisor with the Blue Water Navy Project, and Christina Farm, a supervisor with Quality Protection in the Veterans Service Center.
• Introducing Lea Hart from the County Assessor’s Office.
• Introducing Mike Maxon, the department adjutant for the MN Department of the American Legion, and Tim Engstrom, the Communications Director for the MN Department of the American Legion.

1. Federal Congressional Representatives and Senators

Senator Amy Klobuchar- Kurt Johnson reporting

• The budget was approved and the National Defense Authorization Act was passed. Highlights include $360 million for medical research, including burn pit studies, $22 million for Gulf War Illness research, $20 million for the Beyond the Yellow Ribbon program, and $35 million for an expansion of the Star Base program. It also resolved the 12304 Bravo issue when it comes to service members who redeploy as part of the National Guard. Previously those service members could not qualify for early retirement like other service members. This has been resolved.
• Klobuchar joined onto the Veterans Treatment Court Act, which passed.
• Klobuchar visited several northern counties in November for veteran staff tours to listen to veterans and hear their concerns. The Mayo issue came up often.

Q. Could your team put together a list of issues and concerns that were raised during Klobuchar’s visits to veterans in the various counties so we could address them at this committee and the MAG meeting?
A. Building a comprehensive list is difficult because every stop is different. We are happy to provide highlights of the conversations.

Senator Tina Smith – Alex Schueller

• Not present.

1st District Representative – Jim Hagedorn – Joe Steck

• Not present.

2nd District Representative – Angie Craig – Mike Siebenaler

• Not present.

3rd District Representative – Dean Phillips – Rollie Olson reporting

• Phillips is currently serving on the Financial Services and Foreign Affairs committees.
• The NDAA passed. Phillips had an amendment, the WAFTA Amendment, which went through. This ordered the Army to take responsibility for the cleaning of nuclear missile sites and determine if a plan can be put in place to make that happen.
• The Service Academy interviews were held in December. Of the 43 students who came in for interviews, 32 received nominations.

Q. There are two bills coming out of the House Committee on Veteran Affairs, 6701 and 3495. 6701 is the Improve Care for Veterans Suicide Prevention. We feel the wording on the Improve Care Act supports privation and sending grants away from the VA to facilities that might not have the proper certifications. What is Phillips’s stance on this?
A. Phillips removed his name from the Improve Care Act after hearing that Veteran for Peace had issues with it.

Q. Representative Takano has made changes to the wording. Can you speak to this?
A. Not currently. We will get back to you.

Q. Is there a listing of the veteran bills that have passed in the House and are scheduled to go to the Senate, and vise versa?
A. Specific offices keep track of bills they have signed onto, but there is not an overall list. Congress.gov can track current bills under the Action tab.

Q. The Veterans Treatment Coordination Act of 2019 passed the House, was sent to the Senate, and was then passed. However, instead of passing it to the president for a signature, the Senate sent it back to the House. Can you check and find out what the House needs to do to get that passed?
A. Yes.

4th District Representative – Betty McCollum – Connie Haddeland reporting

• McCollum is the chair on the Committee of Interior Monuments and Parks, and the Vice Chair of Defense Appropriations. The Defense Appropriations Committee is scheduled to begin hearings soon.
• There were 24 interviews for Service Academy nominations in December, and nominated 20. The other four received suggestions to attend prep academies.

5th District Representative – Ilhan Omar – Akolade Gbadamosi

• Not present.

6th District Representation – Tom Emmer – Alejandra Henriquez

• Not present.

7th District Representative – Collin Peterson – Meg Louwagie

• Not present.

8th District Representative – Pete Stauber – Margaret Cavanaugh

• Not present.

2. Federal Agencies

VISN 23 – Ron Woolery reporting

• As of January 6th, the Sioux Falls regional hospital has a new director, Lisa Cimmino. We will be working to get her an Assistant Director.

VBA Regional Office – Kim Graves – Ron Sackett reporting

• St. Paul has been designated as one of eight processing centers for Blue Water Navy claims. We are also the only pension center handling compensation and burial claims related to Blue Water Navy claims.
• January 1st was the first day of claims processing. Employees were willing to come in during the holiday to begin processing. Since January 1st, we have approved 52 claims and paid out over $1.7 million.
• There have been some small issues so far, but we are confident in our ability to handle them and provide excellent service.
• St. Cloud will be hosting a town hall meeting on January 15th.

Mpls VA HCS – Director Patrick J. Kelly – Brad Doboszenski reporting

• During the week of January 13, we will record the Minneapolis VA’s yearly review for the Minnesota Military Radio.
• Minnesota Military Radio will be hosting a luncheon on January 12th.
• March 30th will be the Vietnam War Remembrance Day at the VA. More information will be forthcoming.
• The ER will open an unused drug disposal box soon at the outpatient entrance. All of the CBOCs will have similar systems, though veterans will be given envelopes that they can put their unused in and then be mailed to a central location instead of a drop box. This will be marketed to the public over the next few months.
• There will be a community clinic open house on February 27th at the Shakopee CBOC.

St. Cloud VA HCS – Tyler Bieniek – Brent Thelen reporting

• One of the issues with getting younger veterans to use the VA’s services is the lack of access via technology. The VA is working on improving their technology to allow this. Another issue is ensuring that everyone understands there is a difference between going to the VA for care, and going to the VA to get benefits.
• We are asking people to help educate younger veterans on the processes to follow in order to get them care.
• St. Cloud is taking a process-based approach to addressing and fixing issues. Fargo and Minneapolis are also following this approach.
• Upcoming classes in connected care will be held at the end of January.
• There will be a Coffee Talk on January 10th. Veterans are invited to attend to learn how ot use the VA effectively.
• There will be a Recovery Night in St. Cloud on January 14th.
• There will be a Veterans Town Hall on January 15th.
• The outpatient clinic will be closed on January 20th.

Q. How is the staffing going for psychiatrists and mental health?
A. It’s a challenge. Interviews are being scheduled.

Q. Have you seen the proposal for providers to get their tuition reimbursement bonuses for recruiting to the St. Cloud area? Has this impacted or helped you over the last few years?
A. Not significantly. We still use incentives and that is one of them.

Q. There have been discussions over the year over the lack of support provided to veterans when they leave the military. An eight-week “return to civilization” training program was suggested, including enrollment into the VA health services. What is the process to start this?
A. There is currently a 30-60-90 day reintegration program for returning service members. There is also the TAP program.

Q. Understood, but the program is still not comprehensive enough. Having the VA and the VBA present during that period would be extremely helpful.
A. Thank you.

Q. Beginning in December, the VA launched the Solid Start Program with the DOD. This program will call every veteran, up to 200,000 veterans a year, three times in the first year after they exit the service. This provides exit training and service. However, the reality is most veterans are more interested in getting out than utilizing services. More information is available online.
A. Thank you.

Ft. Snelling Cemetery – John Knapp – Bob Razor reporting

• For the last quarter, there were 1,180 internments. Of those, 849 were cremations. The 72% cremation rate has remained steady. The breakdown of internments was 652 male veterans, 13 female veterans, and 515 family members. There were approximately 78,000 rifle salutes. The rifle squad conducted 572 services in December, compared to 31 military-only services. There were three VSO services.
• A clean sweep of the cemetery will be held on February 1st.
• We are in the process of hiring a cemetery manager in Fargo.
• Bob Razor will attend the regional Legion meeting on January 25th in Moorhead.

VA’s Debt Management Center – Joe Schmitt reporting

• The Debt Management Center is a national entity that collects payments on behalf of the VA, approximately $1.7 billion annually, which then go back to the appropriations. We meet frequently with the VHA to coordinate on benefits, which works on a similar system.
• In August, Congressman Jack Bergman from Michigan called Joe Schmitt to testify before the House Veteran Affairs Committee on the harm done to veterans by debt collection. The VA is required to recoup the cost if a veteran is overpaid, except in certain cases where the VA is at fault. The Veteran Affairs Committee believes that money should be collected back to the appropriations. Many hospitals rely on those benefits to provide advanced care.
• The Chief Financial Officer of the VA has been involved with a number of legislative issues over the last year, including representing the office in Minnesota. It has been important to build relationships with the various organizations and Congress in order to work together to serve veterans more effectively.
• Congressman Pappas will be attending a meeting in the next two weeks with the Debt Management office in order to prioritize areas of concern moving forward. The major issues include: electronic opt-in for financial notifications, improving overall communication with veterans as per the Veterans Care Transition Act, drafting more effective letters, working with credit bureaus to avoid harm to veterans in reporting delinquent debt, increased suspension of collection from 30 days to 90 days, continued modernization of the VA.

3. State Agencies and MN Veteran Assistance Organizations

MN Dept. of Veteran Affairs– Ben Johnson reporting (abbreviated due to technical difficulty)

• We appreciate the funding provided by the most recent round of legislation, specifically toward the veterans homes. $90 million of the funding that was passed was directed toward new state veterans homes. A list will hopefully be provided in the first week of February that will determine where the VA’s three projects fall. The order of precedence based upon the statutory language is Bemidji, Montevideo, and Preston.
• Included in that is $45 million for state cemetery construction grants.

Q. Does the spouse of a veteran in a state cemetery get buried for free?
A. They do not. The cost is $750. Counties have contingency funds for those who are unable to pay for burial, and constituents can appeal to their specific county. There are also processes to have some of those costs offset through the Support Our Troops Fund.

Q. Ft. Snelling can connect people to Indigent Vet program to help with burial funds. Please contact John Knapp for more information.
A. Thank you.

MN Military Affairs – Jon Jensen – Brian Winter reporting

• Three funerals have been held for the service members of the recent helicopter crash. A unit memorial ceremony will be held at the aviation facility in St. Cloud over the weekend of the 11th.
• We do have service members deploying due to the events in Iran. Roughly 700 members of the Army National Guard and 200 Air National Guard have been deployed. There have been no issues from the recent missile attacks.
• Annette Kyper will be meeting with Travelers Insurance in St. Paul on January 10th for their Yellow Ribbon Company kickoff.
• There will be National Guard representation at the Martin Luther King breakfast and the St. Paul event.

MN Assistance Council for Veterans (MACV) – Neal Loidolt – Jon Lovald reporting

• The Home for the Holidays Stand Down was held on December 12th at Target Field. Over 300 veterans were in attendance, along with over 50 family members. We were able to place veterans in front of landlords and helped fill out 15 housing applications on that day. We also hosted a
small job fair on site and saw at least 20 tentative job placements. We coordinated with the DAV to make the event less metro-centric and were able to bus in veterans from Duluth and St. Cloud, and would like to continue to make these events more accessible to veterans throughout the state in the future.
• The grand opening of a fourplex was held on January 4th, the result of a joint effort between MACV and the Carver County Community Development Agency. Those units are dedicated for MACV to make referrals to homeless veterans who are on the registry to be placed. It includes three two-bedroom units and one three-bedroom unit.
• In February we will be opening our third home in District Three. More information about the ribbon cutting date will be forthcoming.
• The Homeless Veteran registry has 295 names on it. We saw the highest number of names ever added to the homeless registry between August and December. We believe the Stand Down events are prompting veterans to come forward, in addition to media outreach efforts.
• We are looking to hire an additional case manager and volunteers who are interested in working with veterans in the MACV office.
• There will be legal clinics on January 14th at the Minneapolis VA and on January 20th at the St. Cloud VA.

Q. Are you aware of any veterans or veteran families that were in the Drake Hotel when it burned?
A. Yes. I do not have the exact numbers, but we have a number of new clients who were impacted by that situation who we are looking to rehouse. We will get more information for you.

MN DEED Veteran Employment Program – Raymond Douha

• Not present.

Hennepin County Assessor’s Office – Lea Hart reporting

• The Homestead statue is required to get the disabled veterans market value exclusion, a significant tax benefit. Up to $300,000 in property value will be excluded from tax for 100% permanent disabled veterans. However, the Homestead statue has an archaic clause in in where the veteran must own and occupy the property by December 1st of the qualifying year to take advantage. Lea Hart has been working for several years to adjust the statue on this. There were issues getting legislators on board and to take the problem seriously. We want to push this issue in 2020 and are asking veterans organizations for their help.
• We could potentially delineate the exclusion from the statue all-together.

Q. What happens if a veteran closes one home and buys another?
A. I will need to check, but I believe they fall off the statue.

Q. There are also issues if a veteran is 90% disabled and only receives $100,000. We would like to see this built onto.
A. That would be a whole new project, but we would support it.

Q. Spouses of veterans also get a lifetime break if the veteran dies, but only if the veteran is 100% disabled.
A. Thank you for bringing that up.

Q. Could you put an information packet together?
A. Yes.

Military Action Group (MAG) – Jerry Kyser reporting

• The next MAG meeting will be held on January 13th at 10:00 AM at the state office building on the 4th floor. We will be working on the Homestead Exclusion issue and the tax problems that the VFW and American Legions are having statewide.

Disabled American Veterans –Trent Dilks

• Not present.

MN CVSO – Greg Peterson

• Not present.

Vets for Peace – Arlys Herem reporting

• We are working to promote a strong VA system that is both intuitionally and community supportive, and continues to provide quality healthcare to veterans.
• We made it out to the bridge to demonstrate in January.
• HF 3495, the Improve Act, was aimed at suicide prevention. The original bill lacked any guardrails for those applying, or for monitoring. Representative Mark Takano greatly improved the language on the bill and we are now in support of it. We would like other organizations to support it as well.

MN Humanities Center – Blake Rondeau reporting

• The Veterans Voices Award will be hosted in October. We are currently solidifying the date and location, but it is tentatively scheduled for October 10th, 2020.
• Two positions are currently open at the MN Humanities Center, the Chief Humanities Officer and a program manger who will run the K-12 education program in Omaha.
• We are currently working with the VA’s Mental Health department and the DNR to run our Hikes and Humanities program. It will host veterans hikes focused on building camaraderie in state parks. This will run May through August, with one hike per month. We plan to host one hike that would cater to veterans with mobility issues.
• The writers workshops will be hosted again this year. More information will be available in February, but we are hoping to broaden the scope this year. The workshop will begin in March, and we hope to do similar workshops in Duluth, Mankato, and Rochester in the future.

Project Got Your Back – Allison Alstrin – Galen Miller reporting

• There is a meeting on January 13th from 12:30 to 2:30 PM at the Veterans Affairs 5th floor conference room at the state captain with VEAC (Veterans Experience Action Council), a nationwide effort to improve the experience of veterans with the entire veteran ecosystem within Minnesota. Everyone is invited to help plan a Stand Down event in coordination with MACV coming up in August. The objective is to provide all the services a veteran will need with a 24-hour period at the Target Stadium.

MN Military Museum – Randal Dietrich reporting

• The Vietnam War roundtable continues at Concordia College. The new sponsor of that event is the DAV.
• The Season of Giving just wrapped up. In that spirit, the MN Military Museum took possession of 32 acres of real estate outside Camp Ripley for what we hope will be a new home for the Military Museum. We are in the process of working with the state legislature to bring together all the resources needed to make that happen. We are looking for $14 million in funding. More information will be forthcoming.

Paralyzed Veterans of America – Todd Kemery

• Not present.

Historic Fort Snelling – Tom Lalim reporting

• Last month it was asked if the raw date would become available as part of the public input process for the potential new name for the historic site. This is the plan. The results of the surveys that were filled out will be made available to the public once the information has been tabulated. We were hoping to get 2,500 responses and received over 7,300. It is taking more time to tabulate everything due to the unexpected number of responses.
• The original goal for a decision date was February, but due to the amount of responses, it is unclear when the new name will be decided.
• We are starting our hiring process for the upcoming summer season. The starting wage is $14.42/hour.

4. The next UVLC meeting will be held on February 5th.

5. UVLC Business Meeting

Business Meeting

• Introducing Burt Hall with Veterans for Peace.
• The balance as of December 1st, 2020 is $2173.17. There were no deposits in December and a transcription expense of $150.
• The balance as of January 1st, 2020 is $1953.17.
• All of the dues letters have been sent. We are expecting a $250 deficit this year due to the organizations that did not continue their membership with the UVLC. The projected budget for 2020 is $1,700. The treasurer’s report was accepted.
• A suggestion was made to request the nonprofit members make a small donation.
• A member requested an agenda be made and sent out for the business meeting.
• There are currently 27 organizations that are members of the UVLC. Of those 27, five are non-paying members. There are currently 22 paying members. The Women Veterans Initiative, the Vietnam Veterans of America, and the MN National Guard Enlisted Association are no longer members. The Women Marines Association also no longer attend.
• Though the VFW formed the UVLC, they have not attended recently. We have made invitations to them.
• There are concerns about how reflective the UVLC is of veterans when three major VSOs are not members. However, due to their organizational charters, several of those organizations cannot be involved in advocating for state issues.
• It was suggested that the organizations who are no longer part of the UVLC to be approached and asked if they would like to have representation at the meetings even if they are no longer paying members.
• The question was raised around how to get more members to attend the business meetings and vote on issues related to the UVLC’s organization. It was suggested the members should be spoken to and asked about why they do not see the need to attend.