Michigan County Departments of Veterans Affairs

Michigan does not require a county to have a veterans service office. Section 35.621(1) says the county board of commissioners may create a county department of veterans' affairs, administered by a committee of three to seven veterans appointed by the board. That permissive verb is the reason Michigan spent decades with uneven county coverage, and the reason the state built a grant program to fix it rather than a mandate. The committee. Members must be county residents who served honorably on active duty, and must include at least one representative of a congressionally chartered veterans' organisation within the county, appointed on the recommendation of the posts of each chartered organisation, and at least one independent member. Each member must have demonstrated knowledge, skills and experience in public service, business or finance. Terms are four years, staggered so no more than two vacancies fall in one year. When a seat opens the board must notify newspapers in the county and the veteran service organisations. A county commissioner may serve. The service officer. Under 35.623 the committee appoints a veterans' service officer and any other necessary employees, and in selecting the officer must consult and request the assistance of any association or council of organised veterans in the county, whose recommendation, while not binding, must be given the greatest consideration. The county board must furnish, equip and maintain reasonably adequate office facilities. The money, and the conditions attached to it. Section 35.623a creates the county veteran service fund in the state treasury, administered by the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency, which must run a grant program for counties. A grant is a base amount of $50,000, or, in a year when the fund cannot support that, the total appropriation divided by 83, which is the number of Michigan counties. On top of the base, each county receives a per capita amount calculated from the number of veterans residing in the county, taken from the most recent VA Geographic Distribution of Expenditures report, out of what remains after the base amounts. If what remains is less than $1,000 times the number of counties receiving grants, the per capita element is not paid at all. A grant must be disbursed within 60 days of a completed and signed grant agreement. What a county must do to keep it. Maintain at least 70 percent of the county funding it provided for veteran service operations in the fiscal year immediately preceding October 1, 2018, and not use grant money to supplant a reduction below that. Demonstrate an effort to establish remote access to VA computing systems and to require county veteran service officers to obtain a PIV card. Submit quarterly reports and regular financial reports. And provide no less than 20 hours per week toward veteran service operations, which the agency may waive on request considering the county's veteran population and any inter-county coordination agreements. If a county spends the money on something else, the agency must notify it of the finding and recover the misused funds before issuing any new grant. What this means for a veteran. The grant conditions are the practical floor on service: a county taking the money is committed to at least 20 hours a week of veteran service operations and to an accredited service officer, defined in the section as an individual accredited under 38 USC 5904 and 38 CFR 14.629. A county that has not created a department at all is not bound by any of it, and a veteran there falls back on the soldiers' relief commission and on the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency directly.