(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds’ bill to restructure funding for county veterans services has cleared one committee in the Iowa Senate — and is ready for debate in another. Each Iowa county currently gets 10-thousand dollars to pay a veterans service officer. The governor says only a third of Iowa’s nearly 180-thousand veterans are signed up for the benefits they earned and her alternative ties funding to the county’s performance in signing veterans up for benefits. Dan Gannon with Disabled American Veterans says he supports the bill because Iowa can do much better at connecting veterans with the compensation they deserve. “I think by better use of the funds, appropriating the funds correctly, accountability, and holding people accountable will get us where we want to get,” Gannon said. Michael Mortensen is legislative liaison for the Iowa Association of County Veterans Services. He says most counties are opposed to the bill because one-third of them would lose funding based on what he says is inaccurate data.

Mortensen says they’d support incentives created with new funding. “We’re very much in favor of a lot of the ideas behind the bill, but the actual way of getting to it, and this really just hammering down from the state, does not equal out into better services to our veterans,” he says, “and that’s what we’re most concerned about.” Winnebago County Veterans Affairs Director Mary Lou Kleveland says the governor’s plan does not recognize that not all veterans qualify for a pension or disability compensation. “We have wonderful veterans who have served maybe two years or four years and they came out of the military without any problems. They don’t have hearing loss, they don’t have tinnitus, they weren’t injured while they were in service, so they’re not going to ever be eligible for disability compensation. That doesn’t mean we don’t serve them,” she said. “We may help them with VA Health Care. We may help them with…an Iowa Veterans Trust Fund if they have special needs.”

And Kleveland says only veterans who have served on active duty at least 90 days to receive a pension.The plan Governor Reynolds unveiled her proposal in January would see the top third of counties with a high percentage of veterans who are signed up for V-A compensation get 15-thousand dollars annually from the state for veterans service officers. The bottom third would get five-thousand dollars and the middle third would get 10-thousand annually if more of the county’s veterans are signed up for V-A benefits.