Information town hall for local veterans to focus on pending legislation and more
Aug. 30—The Butler County Veterans Service Commission is holding a town hall meeting Tuesday evening that promises to provide a wealth of information about everything from pending legislation to benefits.
BCVSC Executive Director Mike Farmer said this is the first town hall meeting the agency has held in a decade or more.
"Our goal when we set this up was to bring bipartisan leadership to the table to hear from the Butler County veterans, good and bad," Farmer said. "So each entity is going to provide some updates whether that is legislative or things that are coming or things that are in the works."
U.S. Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Troy will be in-house for the forum and there will be a videotaped message from U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Cleveland, regarding recent developments at the federal level. State Sen. George Lang, a West Chester Twp. Republican will discuss legislation pending at the state level.
Davidson told the Journal-News he wants to hear whatever the veterans want to say, but he also wants to address the flood of advertisements that hit the airways after they finally passed the legislation that involves toxic burn pits and contaminated water at Camp Lejeune.
He said he heard from a local veteran that a lawyer wanted to take his case for 40% of the claim payout, but the legislation was designed to make things easier for veterans who are eligible to get compensation.
"People should go through the process that's free before they sign up for these lawyers," Davidson said. "Then they would keep the whole benefit, and it's hard to call it a benefit, it's frankly no one would want to deal with medical conditions as a result of being stationed at Camp LeJeune as an example or because someone told you to build a burn pit."
Representatives from the Veterans Benefit Administration Cleveland Public Contact Team will also be on hand to update veterans on VA claims processes, backlogs and other initiatives, like the new valet parking services at the Cincinnati VA Hospital. Farmer said this portion of the session will allow veterans to go one-on-one with the VA and get answers about their individual issues.
"Whenever you deal with the VA there's a lot of red tape and you can never call the right number without somebody putting you through to another number," Farmer said. "This team has complete access so if somebody has a question on their claim Tuesday night they're going to on the spot, one-on-one with them, they're going to bring in their computers and equipment, they will look and tell them exactly what they need, what they're waiting on, what exactly is going on."
The gathering will be in the large conference room on first floor of the Government Services Center nearest the parking garage in downtown Hamilton 6 to 8:30 p.m. today.
Farmer said he is expecting a packed house, likely 100 to 125 veterans, based on having received 82 email responses from people already telling them they will be there.
