Lawmakers Turn to Lottery to Help Build Veterans Trust Fund

In an attempt to fulfill a promise made to Iowa veterans in 2003, lawmakers have turned to a familiar source of revenue: gambling. By a vote of 75-21 Wednesday, the House passed House File 2359, a bill that would direct the Lottery Authority to develop two additional scratch tickets and two additional pull-tab tickets with the profits dedicated to the Veterans Trust Fund (VTF) until the fund reaches $50 million. After that, the lottery game revenue would flow to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The trust fund was created to "assist veterans and their dependents who slip through the cracks of the federal system," Rep. McKinley Bailey, D-Webster City, said on the House floor. "As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue, those cracks become more and more apparent. As a state we have an obligation, a sacred obligation, to ensure that our veterans are taken care of when they come home. That means picking up the slack for the federal government when it lets our veterans down."

Bailey estimated those games would produce up to $3 million a year for the trust fund at a minimal impact on the general fund.

Lawmakers, led by the Republican majority, created the VTF in 2003 with the intent of giving the state flexibility with regard to Iowa’s returning veterans and their families, in particular issues that aren’t covered by federal funding such as job training, unemployment assistance, travel expenses for wounded veterans related to follow-up medical care, nursing home care, counseling programs and honor guard services.

Moreover, lawmakers intended for the VTF to eventually contain $50 million. The current balance is $5 million, and Gov. Chet Culver’s 2008 budget does not contain any additional revenues for the fund. The reason Culver didn't propose more money is that only the interest is being spent, Charles Krogmeier, the governor's staff member who put together the budget, said in a January statement.

The proposal did not receive overwhelming support in the House. Some of the Republican lawmakers took issue with using lottery funds, arguing the revenue stream is unreliable and that creating a lottery for just the veterans doesn’t seem fair to other causes. Rep Scott Raecker, R-Urbandale, offered an amendment to fund breast cancer research, domestic abuse prevention and the Senior Living Trust by expanding the number of lottery games.

Bailey argued the amendment would destroy the bill, contending lottery officials told him the bill would work if there was only one cause benefiting from the games.

House Minority Leader Christopher Rants, R-Sioux City, wondered if the next step would be to have a bake sale rather than continue general fund appropriations to veterans programs, the Cedar Rapids Gazette reported. Ironically, he added, it was Gaming Day at the Capitol, sponsored by the Iowa Gaming Association."How appropriate," Rants said.

The bill now moves on to the Senate.

Originally Posted on "Iowa Independent"

Zirkelbach Leading Charge for Iowa’s Veterans and Citizen Soldiers

The Iowa House Veterans Affairs Committee’s new chair, Ray Zirkelbach, D-Monticello, is poised to lead the fight for veterans this session, vowing to pave the way for a smoother transition for Iowa’s growing population of citizen soldiers. “We’re dealing with a whole new generation of veterans and these are citizen soldiers,” Zirkelbach told the Iowa Independent during an interview. “These are National Guardsmen and reserves' soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and have to transition back into their civilian lives. We don’t have an active-duty base in Iowa, so it’s going to be huge transition. We have a lot of homegrown veterans, a number of which are from rural areas.”

Although Iowa is faced with a growing influx of citizen soldiers from recent wars, Zirkelbach does not want veterans from past wars such as Korea and Vietnam to be forgotten. “They were kind of let down by our government in the past and now it’s my generation, the Iraq war veterans, who need to help get them up to speed,” Zirkelbach said.

Having recently returned from his second deployment to Iraq last year with the Iowa National Guard’s 133rd Infantry Battalion, Zirkelbach is no stranger to leading the fight. During his last tour in Iraq, Zirkelbach was a team leader with his infantry unit. His squad was responsible for providing convoy security in al-Anbar Province, where they helped bring in about one-third of the goods from Jordan.

While deployed to Iraq, Zirkelbach not only missed the birth of his first child, Claire, but the last two legislative sessions of the Iowa House. “The hardest part of my most recent deployment to Iraq was missing my family,” Zirkelbach said. “I missed the birth of my daughter and the first 16 months of her life. My wife and I found out right before we were being deployed that she was pregnant, so I missed the whole pregnancy, the birth and Claire’s first birthday.”

Missing the last two sessions also put a mental strain on Zirkelback, who said that it was hard not being able to actively serve and represent his constituents while he was deployed. “I told people back home that if you want somebody else in there, they should do so,” Zirkelbach said. “But they did nominate me and sent me back into office, which I am grateful for.” In his absence, the Eastern Iowa Democratic delegation and Sen. Tom Hancock, D-Dubuque, helped take care of Zirkelbach’s constituents’ concerns.

House Speaker Patrick Murphy, D-Dubuque, appointed Zirkelbach chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee during the legislative-session interim. “Murphy wanted me there as ranking member when the Democrats were in the minority and now that we are in the majority, he appointed me chair,” Zirkelbach said.

Although he didn’t benefit from the hands-on political experience during the last two sessions, Zirkelbach’s experiences in Iraq did give him a new perspective on how to approach his legislative duties. “I can sit back more and analyze things more deeply than I did during my first year in the House,” Zirkelbach said. “Iraq was an eye-opening experience, and I learned to appreciate things that you can only learn to appreciate while serving in a third-world country. It broadened my perspective on a lot of things.”

That said, Zirkelbach said he wants to set the tone this session by focusing on more issues of substance. “It seemed like a lot of the veterans' issues pushed since 9/11 have been feel-good goals,” Zirkelbach said. “As chair I want to focus more on substance issues that will address problems facing veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, in particular mental-heath care and medical care – especially accessibility for veterans living in rural areas.” To address this, Zirkelbach introduced House File 2033, which calls for full mental-health parity for veterans and requires employers and insurance providers to cover veterans’ mental-health care and substance abuse as part of their health care.

Zirkelbach noted that compared with the other states, Iowa has consistently ranked close to the bottom when it comes to veterans' benefits. “Knowing how the state government works, we know that these changes won’t happen overnight, but we will focus on the immediacy of veterans’ issues by targeting some of the more important problems facing Iowa’s veterans,” Zirkelbach said.

Moreover, the Veterans Affair Committee faces the fiscal challenge of vying for funding for any existing and new veterans' programs. There have been some concerns in the veterans’ community that Gov. Chet Culver’s budget proposal doesn’t allocate enough funding for veterans, other than the money designated for the Marshalltown Veterans Home.

Zirkelbach remains optimistic about the budget and says veterans’ advocates need to be patient and take a look at the big picture. “Most of the funding for veterans-related bills comes out of other appropriation subcommittee’s budgets,” Zirkelbach said. “That’s another issue in itself. I would like to see the Veterans Affairs Committee have its own appropriations subcommittee, so we have more control on what we fund and how much we can fund on veterans’ programs.

Adding to the state’s fiscal constraints, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have shifted a great deal of the financial burden on the states, which increasingly, have to pick up the financial tab for veterans' programs in their respective states. “The federal government has been dumping on states and using and abusing us. There’s a lot of misleading going on,” Zirkelbach said.

“It’s clear that the president and the people in control did not foresee the future problems facing our citizen soldiers. Members in our unit had to find out the hard way upon their return from Iraq. It’s never been such a mess, and you would think that the federal government would treat us in a better manner.”

Originally posted on "Iowa Independent"

Lawmakers One Step Closer to Protecting Returning Soldiers’ Jobs

(Update: The House passed House File 2065 this morning. There were no votes against the bill and it now heads to the Senate. Employers who fail to follow the law face possible simple misdemeanor charges with up to 30 days in jail and fines up to $625. Under the proposed changes to the law, a county attorney could request the Iowa Attorney General follow through with prosecution. That change would help expedite soldiers’ claims and help ensure swifter justice ensure, lawmakers said.)

Iowa’s soldiers may no longer have to worry about whether they will have a job when returning from active-duty deployment. A measure, House File 2065, which protecting returning Iowa’s National Guard and reserve soldier’s jobs passed its first hurdle.The House Veterans Affairs Committee approved the bipartisan initiative 15-0 Wednesday. The plan will ensure that soldiers called to active duty can return to their jobs after service at the same pay and status level.

"Men and women called to active duty deserve our support,” McKinley Bailey, D-Webster City, the lead sponsor of the bill said in a statement. “After serving our country and being separated from their families, the least we can do is ensure an easy transition back to civilian life, which includes going back to their job at the same pay and status level.”

The legislation was first proposed at a news conference in Des Moines back in October by Bailey and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, D-Des Moines.

While the federal law, USERRA (Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act), requires employers to hold a position for a returning soldier, proponents of the new mesure contend that if an employer is not fully compliant with the law, a soldier’s only recourse is to file a lawsuit that can take years to resolve."It puts some more teeth into it," McCarthy said in an October statement. "It's a more streamlined process, a process that's closer to home."

House Veterans Affairs Committee Chair Ray Zirkelbach, D-Monticello, echoed McCarthy’s response. “The bill will give attorneys at the county level more power to go after and prosecute employers who are not compliant with USERRA in a more timely manner,” Zirkelbach told the Iowa Independent. Zirkelbach is optimistic about the bill, the first one introduced in the 2008 session, and thinks it has a good chance of passing in the House by the end of the week.

Employers, however, are no longer held liable if the position or business itself was discontinued during the time of the employee’s deployment. The proposal in Iowa would create possible criminal charges for violators and make the appeals process less cumbersome. It also would require employers to reimburse military members for pay lost during the time their jobs were denied to them.

To help illustrate the federal law’s shortcomings, Capt. Pam Reynolds, a physical therapist from Ames who served a 15-month deployment beginning in 2006, accompanied the lawmakers at the October press conference. Upon returning from her service, Reynolds was told she could apply for a physical therapist position at Green Hills Retirement Community in Ames, a similar job but with lower pay."Most of us coming back are just wanting to get into the community," Reynolds told the Des Moines Register in October. "We definitely don't want to be where I'm standing right now. We just want back into our normal routine. While many veterans realize that federal law protects their jobs, the understanding is vague and many don't know how to react, Reynolds said. "We know there's a law out there," she said. "We don't know what it means."

Often times, employer’s non-compliance with USERRA is not intentional, rather, employers didn’t know about their obligations under the law. To help remedy this, the Department of Defense (DoD) created the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR), which helps educate soldiers and employers about the federal law. “We’re not litigators. We are just here to help enhance communication between employer and employee to help resolve any conflicts,” ESGR State Chair Barry Spears told the Iowa Independent in October. “We’ve had a good track record in the two-and-a-half years I’ve been here, and we have not had a problem go unresolved.”

Most of the problems that do arise are namely because of misunderstandings, misinterpretation, or because of ignorance on behalf of either the employer or the employee said Spears. Asked whether Iowa needed a law that would enforce the current federal regulations, Spears said that anything that can be done to help support these civilian members is important. “That’s why we should work hard to take care of them, so they don’t have to worry about these types of problems when they return from deployment,” Spears said.

Bailey Introduces Bill to Protect Veterans Employment