Franklin County Veterans Affairs

The Franklin County Office of Veterans Affairs is the office every Pennsylvania county must have: a director of veterans affairs appointed by the county (16 Pa.C.S. 15524). See the Pennsylvania entry on county directors. Director Joshua Curry, appointed May 2025 after twenty years with Abraxas Youth and Family Services and more than two decades with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard's 1069th Military Police Company, from which he retired as a platoon sergeant; Veterans Affairs Coordinator and accredited VSO Tabitha Kennedy; administrative assistant Tabitha Newlin, also an Army National Guard veteran. Human Services Building, 425 Franklin Farm Lane, Chambersburg PA 17202; 717-263-4326; fax 717-263-1905; [email protected]. Hours Monday to Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; appointments encouraged. The Department of Military and Veterans Affairs' September 9, 2026 directors list carries the same address and numbers. The office's page thanks Cumberland County's Veterans Affairs team for its help onboarding the new staff. What it does. Benefit coordination, outreach and advocacy for the county's veterans - more than 13,000 of them and their families, by the office's count. VA compensation, pension and survivor claims; health care enrolment pointers to the Martinsburg VA Medical Center, the Martinsburg Vet Center and the Hagerstown VA outpatient clinic; replacement medals and service records on an SF 180; the State real estate tax exemption and Veterans' Temporary Assistance, whose applications the office takes (the county posts a real-estate-tax-exemption checklist and the Department's temporary assistance application); the county burial allowance and grave markers (see that entry); and "information and support for justice-involved veterans". The county's 2025-2026 Human Services Block Grant plan, quoting the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, records the office processing 15,155 claims between July 2024 and May 2025, for $29,821,883.58 awarded to Franklin County veterans. The tax exemption. The county's own checklist walks an applicant through the State form, and the exemption itself is granted by the county Board of Assessment Appeals: on March 18, 2026 that board approved 89 veteran exemptions reducing the tax base by $2,385,260. Where the pages are thin. The Register & Recorder publishes nothing about recording discharges - its fee schedule names no discharge and the site's search returns nothing for DD-214 - so discharge recording is known only from the statute, and the office's own pages point to the SF 180 for records requests. The Good Wolf Treatment Court has no veterans track.