MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs held two special-called board meetings Tuesday after the filing of two bills that members said came as a surprise to them.
House Bill 197 and Senate Bill 135 would direct the ADVA to establish and operate a statewide health care system for Alabama veterans and their families.
The scope of the proposal, at least according to ADVA Commissioner Kent Davis, is unlike anything else in the nation.
“It was kind of like a shotgun blast,” said ADVA Legislative Committee member Charles Waugh at the agency’s first meeting of the day. “It’s saying you’re going to do something that you’ve not even discussed or talked about.”
Member by member, ADVA Legislative Committee all shared similar sentiments on the bills: That while health care for veterans did need to be improved in the state, the scope of the proposal could exceed the manpower or funding resources of the department.
“I’m going to open by saying that this has surprised the majority of the members of the committee, the board and the agency, and we are beginning this process significantly behind the power curve because of where we were left out of the communication process,” said Tony Berenotto, chair of the ADVA Legislative Committee.
Berenotto advised members, however, that the bill’s House and Senate sponsors – Rep. Chip Brown, R-Hollingers Island, and Sen. Andrew Jones, R-Centre – are “very much friends of the veterans community” and urged them to communicate their concerns constructively.
The proposal as outlined in the two bills has been advocated for by the Military Officers Association of America, a nonprofit organization that lobbies on behalf of veterans and active duty service members.
John Kilpatrick, president of the MOAA Alabama chapter, had met with Jones to discuss health care access issues for veterans, but said during the meeting that the bill’s filing still came as a surprise to him.
“I happened to tell it to one of these legislators who sponsored this bill, and this is what came of it, so as a board member, I was not driving this to undermine, to go around, to do anything,” Kilpatrick said.
“This bill filing surprised me because I thought we would have a meeting, we would be able to discuss, contribute to it before it got filed.”
Both Brown and Jones told Alabama Daily News they would work with ADVA leadership on the bill.
“I think as it was drafted, it probably is a little broader than we wanted to initially do in a first step, so we’ve already been thinking along those lines,” Jones told ADN.
“So certainly we want to make sure we hone in and refine the language in the bill, make sure we get something workable, and then find some funding; to take a bite or two at the apple, whether that’s a pilot project, or whether that’s taking a few initial steps to provide some programing, that’s what we want to do.”
Last year, Davis named increasing mental health funding for veterans was his top priority for 2024. Alabama’s nearly 400,000 veterans, much like veterans across the country, are far more prone to suicide and drug addiction than non-veterans.
“Veterans and their immediate family make up about 26% of the population of the state of Alabama; the federal VA – not the state VA – has really, in my opinion, dropped the ball on taking care of veterans,” Jones continued.
“There are wait times for medical care of 60-plus days, there are wait times for mental health appointments of 20-30 days in places around the state… really, our military veterans deserve better.”
The Senate version of the bill passed out of committee last week, whereas Brown told ADN he hopes the House version will come up for a vote in committee soon.
Committee member Michael Davis later broke down what he considered to be the core issues with the two bills as written.
“I’m looking at this and I just don’t see it as feasible; I see it as not logistically possible, I see it as duplicative… it’s almost like a parallel program to what the VA is offering, and it even goes a step beyond, it mentions dependents,” Davis said.
“I think we should ask the legislators if they can hit the pause button a little bit, and let us take a better look at this and see if we can come up with some suggestions that are maybe even workable.”
Now unable to help craft the bill from the ground up, Davis instead suggested the ADVA put their efforts in working with the bill’s sponsors to refine the bill in a manner more in line with the capabilities of the department.
“I think there’s a happy medium somewhere in the middle somewhere where we can tackle these crisis-proportion stats on mental health for veterans and come up with something that does real good that’s affordable, (and) that empowers a lot of partnerships that we have,” he said.
At a meeting later that day of the ADVA State Board, which consists of largely the same members, the body voted to empower three members – Bernenotto, Davis and ADVA Deputy Attorney General Beverly Gebhardt – to engage with the bill’s sponsors in refining the bills.