A group looking to improve conditions for American veterans held its first in a national series of town hall-style meetings at the state Capitol on Tuesday, and commissioners found no shortage of suggestions and complaints from a crowd of West Virginia veterans.

Tuesday’s town hall meeting was the first for the Commission on the Future for America’s Veterans in a series of similar hearings, where input will be sought for crafting a long-range plan for maintaining and improving the U.S. Veterans Administration. Among those speaking Tuesday were United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts and Consol Energy CEO Peter Lilly. The two recently sat at different sides of the table when hammering out a new national coal agreement, but agreed Tuesday that America’s veterans need better treatment.

The coal executive and the union leader — both Vietnam veterans — are “proud of our veterans,” Lilly said, and anxious to see that they receive the benefits that are due them. “We need a new GI Bill that gives veterans everything they were promised by risking their lives, limbs and livelihoods” through military service, Roberts said.

“They should be getting the best health care possible, without having to be sent to facilities across the United States,” he said. Maintaining and improving VA programs “is not a conservative issue or a liberal issue,” Roberts said. “We need to stand up and with one voice say to Congress and to the presidential candidates, ‘This is what veterans want.’” The VA’s aging hospital system needs to be upgraded, he said, “and people shouldn’t have to wait years and years and years to have their claims processed. We can do better than that.”

West Virginia’s only living Medal of Honor recipient warned of a new group of veterans who will need care. “We will need more medical centers with the expertise to care for our seriously injured veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, who in many cases would not have survived in my day,” said Herschel “Woody” Williams of Ona, who received the Medal of Honor for heroism as a Marine during World War II.

In addition to the “tens of thousands of servicemen and women who have suffered traumatic injuries such as losing limbs, blindness or extensive burns over their bodies from blasts,” thousands more returning veterans will need treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, said Randall Bare of Ravenswood. Treatment of severe traumatic injuries, Bare said, “is a type of care that the VA, at least to this point, has delivered in limited cases. Bare also called for a GI Bill with educational benefits similar to those available to World War II vets, under which virtually all college costs were covered.

VA benefits similar to those offered to regular military personnel should also be available to National Guard and Reserve troops summoned to extended active-duty status, said Gen. Allen Tackett, the state’s National Guard adjutant general. “Since the Sept. 11 attacks, 5,500 of West Virginia’s 6,500 Guardsmen have served in a war zone,” Tackett said.

Keith Gwinn, deputy director of the state Division of Veterans Affairs, said that the VA should hire enough personnel to process a huge backlog of eligibility determinations. “There’s no long-range plan to decrease the backlog,” he said, and not enough outreach staff to help veterans file claims. He cited the case of one West Virginia veteran who was initially turned down for assistance because a form was filled out wrong, and within weeks of being told he was ineligible, committed suicide.

State Administration Secretary Robert Ferguson, a 22-year Marine veteran, suggested that the VA reimburse local hospitals for routine health-care matters, saving trips to distant VA facilities.
He added that the Tri-Care health insurance plan offered to military retirees is not honored by specialists in the Charleston area.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., in a letter to the commission read by spokeswoman Ann Barth, said access to VA programs should be expanded to rural areas. “Too often veterans in our state are effectively denied the best health-care options because specialized medical procedures have been consolidated in other states,” Byrd wrote. “Driving five hours to a more distant VA hospital is simply not a realistic solution for many veterans.”

“You make West Virginia more proud than you would recognize,” Gov. Joe Manchin told veterans attending the meeting. “I would hope the federal government would never feel that enough has been done for you.”

The commission, created by the nation’s largest organized veterans groups, is privately funded and not affiliated with the federal government, although it has bipartisan congressional support and the backing of VA Secretary James Nicholson. The commission will release a set of recommendations for improving the VA in spring 2008.