Veterans home bill clears panel

LITTLE ROCK — Legislation that would allow the director of the state Department of Veterans Affairs to select the location for a new state veterans home cleared an Arkansas House committee Wednesday.

The department’s director would choose the site after seeking advice from the Arkansas Veterans’ Commission.

The commission is an advisory panel on veterans issues for the governor and Legislature.

House Bill 1013, which is sponsored by Rep. John Edwards, D-Little Rock, would also eliminate the requirement that the home be at a particular location in Little Rock.

State law now mandates that a veterans home be located at the old Arkansas School for the Blind and the Arkansas School for the Deaf in Little Rock. The bill also would limit a new state veterans home to 150 beds.

The veterans home in Little Rock, which was in disrepair, closed in November after its 70 residents moved to other facilities. It would have cost an estimated $10 million to modernize that building’s plumbing, electrical, heating and cooling systems.

Edwards said his bill “is a first step to correct what ...has been a shameful problem here in the state of Arkansas.”

The state has provided nursing-home care for veterans for many years, and virtually every state provides similar care in a partnership with the federal government, he said.

“But we have not done a very good job in caring for our veterans,” Edwards told the House Committee on Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs on Wednesday.

The veterans home in Little Rock “was something that no one in this room would be proud of. It was more or less a hand-me-down facility,” he said. “While some of the veterans that lived there might have been grateful to have that versus nothing, what they had was something that none of us would want to see for our family members.”

Edwards said he was contacted about problems with care at the state veterans home in Fayetteville in late 2011, then visited the veterans homes in Fayetteville and Little Rock, and that led to his bill.

If the state comes up with its 35 percent share of the cost of constructing a new veterans home, the federal Department of Veterans Affairs would contribute the other 65 percent, he said. He said $21 million is a reasonable estimate for the cost of a new veterans home, so the state’s share would be about $7 million.

Edwards said Louisiana has five quality veterans homes that function without state funds. HB1013 is the second veterans home bill to advance in this year’s Legislature.

Senate Bill 3, sponsored by Sen. Jane English, R-North Little Rock, would create a 22-member task force to study and make recommendations for opening a new Arkansas veterans home.

The task force would begin meeting by May 1 and would submit its recommendations to House and Senate committees and the Legislative Council by Oct. 31.

Among other things, the task force would be required to conduct a needs assessment and evaluate possible locations for new facilities. It also would determine the cost of designing and constructing new facilities or using existing facilities, and look for ways to pay for the project.

English and Edwards said their respective veterans home bills are complementary.

In another development, the House committee on Wednesday endorsed a bill to make it easier for spouses of active military personnel to get professional licenses or certification when they move to Arkansas.

Under SB7, sponsored by Sen. Eddie Joe Williams, R-Cabot, state boards that license teachers, nurses and other professionals would be allowed to issue temporary work licenses to spouses of active-duty servicemen if they have similar credentials from another state.