I thought we had seen the worst years for veterans in Alabama in years past.
2017 was notably bad when the state legislature cut the State’s scholarship program for dependents of disabled veterans by 50%, a sucker punch for those families counting on those funds for college. While other states were increasing benefits for their veterans, our state legislators stabbed Alabama’s veterans and their families in the back with those cuts in benefits, after many of those disabled veterans had specifically settled in the state after their military service because of the promise of college scholarships for their kids.
Then came 2024 and Governor Kay Ivey’s horrible decision to remove the highly respected commissioner of the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs (ADVA) from his office—a bizarre move on her part—after he was required by law and his bosses on the State Board of Veterans Affairs (SBVA) to file an ethics complaint against the deficient mental health system in our state. That deplorable decision, effectuated when the commissioner was battling Stage 3 cancer no less, was a national embarrassment and continues to blow up in Ivey’s face to this day. Be advised: it isn't over yet, and justice will be dealt accordingly to those who merit it.
I was grossly wrong, however. 2025 topped them all in stiffing the state’s military veterans. The year began with Ivey’s continued, vindictive contempt for veterans when she had her legal advisor (whom she later suspiciously appointed to the Alabama Supreme Court) draft what would become Senate Bill 67, a horrible piece of legislation that politicized ADVA by making its commissioner a political appointee for the first time in its 80-year history. She also ensured that the SBVA, composed of representatives from Alabama’s veteran service organizations since World War II, was stripped of the vast majority of its powers simply because the board had unanimously supported the previous commissioner, effectively making it a feckless “advisory body” with almost no authority.
Ivey then used a combination of under-the-table promises and threats to kowtow enough state legislators, particularly the cowardly figurehead sponsors of the bill, to get it passed. It is notable, however, that nine state senators and 40 state representatives recognized the bill's true motivations and effects, bravely defied Ivey, and voted against it. In fact, the momentum was clearly against passage of the bill when sponsors Sen. Andrew Jones and Rep. Ed Oliver rushed it through for a vote without adequate public notice or without some legislators even being able to read the entire bill. It left many wondering what the rush was all about, except for an expression of Ivey’s bitterness and retaliation. I was at the State House several days, monitoring the governor's ambush of our state's veterans.
Ivey’s actions did not take long to pay off in a very bad way. Shortly after Senate Bill 67 passed, Ivey appointed a new ADVA commissioner. Within a month of his appointment, a major fire broke out at the brand-new Bennie G. Adkins State Veterans Home in Enterprise, resulting from worker negligence and inadequate supervision. To remind Alabama’s veterans, that home had been a five-plus year project of the previous ADVA commissioner (yes, the one Ivey purported to terminate) and had been built to alleviate the nation’s longest waiting list for state veterans home services—a building project that had admirably been brought in on time and on budget, ironically just a few days before Ivey removed the previous commissioner.
When the major fire at the new home occurred, the new commissioner did not even bother to lead or speak at the post-fire press conference (great leadership there!). Although the ADVA and the governor’s office have been highly circumspect and evasive in the aftermath, reports indicate that the fire caused over $50 million in damage to the facility and that it will be closed for almost two years for major reconstruction. Despite all of this, apparently, no one has been held accountable for that entire fiasco. So much for “supreme executive power” by our increasingly elusive governor and her political appointee in ADVA.
I wish that I could express hope for 2026, but the signs are already in place for another rough year ahead for Alabama’s veterans: Governor Ivey, Alabama Power (what they have to do with veterans affairs is beyond me), and some of the same questionable actors in the state legislature like Sen. Andrew Jones are pushing a classic “solution in search of a problem” by spending $10 million of consumer and taxpayer money to open a nebulous “veteran resource center” in crime-ridden, parking-deficit downtown Montgomery.
In addition, there is a brewing scandal involving another Ivey-fostered boondoggle called Dovetail Landing, and those 2026 window-dressing issues, my fellow veterans and citizens of Alabama, will be the subject of my next piece in the days to follow.
Troy Carico is a former infantry enlisted soldier (11B) and infantry officer with branch qualifications including counterintelligence (35E) and military intelligence (35D). He served with distinction in the U.S. Army for more than 22 years and is highly decorated and service-connected disabled. He also has prior service as a civilian intelligence officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency Great Skills Program and has served in numerous clandestine assignments throughout the world.
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