With budgets under pressure, states grapple with how to serve growing numbers of veterans
By Mike Francis, The Oregonian
on March 12, 2013 at 9:28 PM
on March 12, 2013 at 9:28 PM
Being a military veteran has its benefits.
In Oregon, vets can get: up to $150 a month to go to school; free hunting licenses for those rated 25 percent or more disabled; free parking at state parks; veteran license plates for $10 every two years; free copies of Oregon records for VA purposes. They also can draw on home loans, get preference for government jobs or be placed in a state-owned skilled nursing facility.
Other states are generous to veterans in their own ways, as state legislatures around the country responded to the homecomings of troops who fought the most recent wars. But benefits differ from state to state, meaning a veteran who moves across state lines may find, for example, a tax exemption he enjoyed in one state is different in the other.
"There is not one uniformity," said Steve Gonzalez, the assistant director of the economic division of the American Legion in Washington, D.C. "The federal government can only do so much." The question is, he said, "How do we work together?"
(For a state-by-state guide to veterans' benefits, see Military.com's directory.)
It's an issue that's playing out on the fringes of the current legislative session in Salem. Sen. Alan Olsen, R-Canby, has introduced a bill that would alter the property tax exemption formula for disabled vets. Yet whether it passes or not, it still will be different from the formulas offered in other states.
That's what Portlander Ed Reiman discovered when he compared the formulas in Montana, where he used to spend his summers, and Oregon. Montana grants full exemption from property taxes for veterans who are 100 percent disabled. Oregon's current formula allows veterans with disability ratings of 40 percent and higher to exempt up to $22,138 of their property value from state taxes. The difference could be meaningful for a disabled veteran who sells a home in one state and buys one in another.
Reiman, 66, a 100 percent disabled Vietnam veteran, has asked Sen. Brian Boquist, R-Dallas, the chair of the Senate's Veterans and Emergency Preparedness Committee, to consider adopting a broader exemption. While he personally would benefit, he said he's thinking more about other veterans, especially young vets of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Young guys need the boost as much as us old farts," he said.
Boquist said by email the tax exemption question is "under review." But he added that, "from a tax and budget position, it would be challenging." An economist for the Legislative Revenue Office estimated that a full property tax exemption for 100 percent disabled veterans would cost Oregon about $9.3 million in lost revenue.
Any comparison of tax systems from state to state is inevitably an apples-to-oranges comparison. Oregon depends more on property taxes than do states with a sales tax, for example. And property tax rates -- not to mention real estate values -- vary considerably from place to place.
Cameron Smith, director of the Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs, said variations in veterans programs are a fact of life. He said the core programs for veterans in Oregon and elsewhere center on health care, education and employment. Oregon's veterans agency, with its limited resources, is asking itself "How do we get bigger, larger partnerships?" Smith said.
The American Legion and the National Association of State Directors of Veterans Affairs each keep spreadsheets that compare veterans benefits by state. They show that Oregon is better than many states in some regards -- it is one of only nine states that offer veterans home loans, for example -- but lags in others.
The question of which veterans' benefits to provide is looming larger for states, which await the outcome of the current round of federal budget wrangling. Already, for example, the Air Force, Marines and Army have suspended their tuition assistance programs, citing budget uncertainty. That leaves some veteran-students in the lurch.
The question is acquiring more urgency because of the sheer volume of new veterans entering society. The winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed to "the dumping into society of large numbers of veterans and their families," said the American Legion's Gonzalez. He noted that the Defense Department is releasing 250,000 troops this year -- a number that may increase with budget cuts.
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