Panel votes to slash vets home funding

A state legislative panel last week voted to slash funding for the Montana Veterans Home, a move that could ultimately lead to the shut down of the home, administrators claim.

The Joint Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee voted to cut the amount of cigarette tax funding to the home by $847,000 this year and an additional $1.4 million the next year.

This year’s cut would result in the loss of 10 to 14 jobs, said Kelly Williams and Joren Underdahl. The $1.4 million cut, which would come next summer, would make it difficult, if not impossible, to run the facility, they said.

Williams is the administrator for the state Department of Health and Human Services long-term care division. Underdahl is the administrator of the facility. Both spoke to the Hungry Horse News in a conference call last week.

Underdahl said the $1.4 million cut, which would come next July, would force more layoffs and would also mean the home would have to increase costs to patients by $40 to $50 a day, or about $15,000 a year. In reality, he said, it would be difficult to run the facility and still provide quality care.

The panel also directs the Department of Health and Human Services to pursue a request for proposals to privatize the facility.

“This is outrageous. Veterans deserve high quality health care, and that is what is provided at Montana Veterans Home,” said Eric Feaver, president of MEA-MFT, the union that represents the 150 employees at the home. “The home is a five-star health care facility because it provides appropriate staffing, excellent specialized services to those who need them, and dedicated, qualified, experienced staff. To diminish care for our veterans, especially now when the United States is waging two wars, is just plain wrong.”

But Republican state Sen. Dave Lewis of Helena, who sat on the panel, said it boiled down to expense.

“It is the cost,” he said in an e-mail to the Hungry Horse News. “Note that Columbia Falls is $120,000 a year for each resident versus $39,000 in Glendive. Also workmen’s compensation claims are nearly 500 percent higher in Columbia Falls.”

The Glendive facility — the Eastern Montana Veterans Home — is owned by the state but privately operated. As such, the state pays far less to maintain it. Thus the lower cost per resident.

But the Montana Veterans Home also contains several historic structures, baseball fields used by Columbia Falls teams, a hiking path, a cemetery and a 20-acre campus.

In short, many consider it the heart of the city.

The proposal still has a way to go. As an amendment to House Bill 2 — the state’s massive spending bill — it would still have to survive the complete budget process.

But Republicans control both the Senate and the House this session.

Not all Republicans are in favor of the cuts.

Sen. Ryan Zinke, who represents Whitefish, Columbia Falls and the Canyon, said he opposes closing the home or cutting services to vets.

Zinke is a retired Navy SEAL. He said he could support a study to privatize the facility, but he wasn’t convinced the savings were really there.

He said in a “perfect world” the home could be contracted out and the grounds could be absorbed by the city. That would solve another problem — the state wants to charge the Columbia Falls baseball program more than $3,500 a year to use the fields — fields the association wholly built and maintain. The land, however, is still owned by the state. In the past, the baseball team payed a small fee to lease the land each year.

Zinke said the move to cut Veterans Home funding was “shooting from the hip.”

“A decision of this magnitude has to be done thoughtfully,” he said.

The panel vote to cut the funding went along party lines.

Lewis was joined by  Republicans Don Roberts, John Esp, Tom Burnett, and Jason Priest in voting for the cut. Democrats Mary Caferro, Trudi Schmidt, and Mary Caferro voted against it.