Amendments on legislation "restructuring" the governance of the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs (ADVA) are "not addressing the substantive issues," according to former ADVA commissioner Kent Davis.
The bill was carried over in the Senate on Tuesday after nine amendments were added. It could come up again next week for a final vote in the Senate.
The legislation would change the ADVA commissioner's role to being appointed by the governor. Currently, the position is hired and fired by the State Board of Veterans Affairs. The State Board of Veterans Affairs would also be changed to an "advisory" role. The amended version of the bill gives appointing authority to the governor, lieutenant governor, House speaker, and Senate pro-tem. Governor Kay Ivey endorsed the legislation in her State of the State address last week. Davis has said the bill is "retaliation" for his ethics complaint against a member of Ivey's cabinet last year.
Davis said during an interview on Rightside Radio on Friday that the legislation was still a "bad idea."
"Yeah, there are at least nine amendments now, I've heard," Davis said. "And I've heard there might be as many as 14 now being proposed. Unfortunately, most of the amendments are aimed at tweaking the membership of the State Board of Veterans Affairs. Now, the one criticism that I think is legitimate that I've had is, that's a big board. It is a really big board. 17 members by law now. That's, at some point, you become unwieldy. I've always said, you might want to consider paring that board down to a more manageable size, 10 to 12 people. It's always important to look at diversity, both geographically, demographically. But they're now back up to... They started with nine members of this reconstituted advisory board, taking away their power. And now I think they're up to 15 again, because they keep adding in mandatory members of the board. So I'm not... I think that's a bad idea."
He continued, "So the amendments seemed largely aimed at doing worse damage to the bill, and they're not addressing the substantive issues of taking away the substantive power of the State Board of Veterans Affairs and politicizing all of those positions, the commissioner and the state board members. I personally think that's a mistake. I think there's a hybrid that you could come up with that gives the governor, other politicians, a strong say, but also gives a strong say to the veteran community in running Veterans Affairs in Alabama. And there's a great analogy there, by the way, with the Alabama Department of Public Health. They went through last year. You may remember there was backing off of the original intent. There was an original intent to make the public health officer, the state health officer, a political appointee. And then, much like this, a very specialized area in taking care of a particular segment of the population, the end result was, well, we're not going to change it that much. The state health officer will still be appointed by a board of medical experts with just a little bit more political oversight. I would hope that cooler heads would prevail in this and a recognition this is a very specialized area. The model has worked very well for 80 years. Alabama gets accolades for some of the things we were doing in Veterans Affairs at the state level. I think the lieutenant governor said it well. He said, 'if it ain't broke, why fix it?'"
Davis said "this bill seems to be retaliation against the State Board of Veterans Affairs for unanimously voting to retain me, honestly."
He added, "That's what I hear in the veteran community. But no interest, no participation by the governor up until recently. Now, all of a sudden, there's this sudden interest in 'improving ADVA.' Never heard anything but accolades, good reports. And I do find some of the substantive reasons that are being touted for this bill a little suspect. They keep saying, 'Oh, it's important to raise the commissioner to cabinet level to stress the importance.' Well, we proposed this several years ago. It wasn't me. It was actually the executive director of AlaVetNet, which is an interagency cooperation group. And the governor said 'no' several years ago," Davis said.
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email caleb.taylor@1819News.com.
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