New York County and City Veterans' Service Agencies

Veterans' Services Law section 14 requires a county veterans' service agency "in each county not wholly included within a city", with a county director appointed by the county executive, or by the chair of the board of supervisors with the board's approval where there is no executive. A director hired after the law took effect must be a veteran and must become accredited by VA as a veterans service organization representative within eighteen months, and keep that accreditation. Section 14 also lets any city set up its own city veterans' service agency, with a director appointed by the mayor. Once a city has one, the county director no longer has jurisdiction inside that city. New York City's five counties are wholly inside one city, so they have no county agency at all; the City's Department of Veterans' Services is the local agency for all five boroughs. What a local agency does. Section 15 gives every local agency the duty to help members of the uniformed services, veterans and their families who live in the State with education and retraining, health and rehabilitation services, the special rights the law gives veterans, employment including the section 55-c programme for veterans with disabilities, applying to the discharge upgrade advisory board, and volunteer fire and emergency service openings. It may also help the families of reservists and Guard members called to active duty. The agency is the place to start for a VA claim, the State's annuities and the county's own benefits, and it charges nothing. Older citations. These two sections were Executive Law 357 and 358 until 2022, when Article 17 of the Executive Law became the Veterans' Services Law. Local laws, county web pages and forms written before then still cite the Executive Law numbers.