Josephine County voters to decide if they want to pay for veterans services

Lisa Pickart is the director of Josephine County’s Veterans Service Office. There’s one just like hers in most counties across the country. She said veterans have already done so much serving their country.

“They’ve already paid the ultimate price, they shouldn’t have to pay for somebody to advocate for them through this legal maze,” said Pickart. “It’s a legal process, and it can be tricky.”

Pickart and her small staff help veterans apply for benefits including medical care, disability payments, pensions and more. She said her office typically has around 3,000 live claims out at any given time. Sometimes these claims can take up to 10 years to get resolved, waiting for an appeals hearing in front of a judge.

“I’m still working with Vietnam veterans that I worked with in 2001 when I first started the job,” Pickart said.

On top of helping veterans apply for benefits, Pickart said they’ve also done other outreach programs in the community.

“In 2011 we started a music group for veterans who were suffering from either PTSD or reintegration issues and just needed some support,” she said. “We just ended that program this year. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be funded anymore.”

The office relies mostly on county funding right now, and commissioners cut their budget by almost a hundred thousand dollars earlier this year, dropping from $542,400 to $468,400. But, Pickart noted, they only used around $457,000 last year, partly because they’ve been short on staff. She said they’ve been operating on just three staff positions for a year, while they had at least four employees since 2018.

“I’m coming from a space where, a year and a half ago we could get veterans in the next day for for appointments, and now we’re booked out till October,” Pickart said. “And we had a staff that could actually take vacations, and now we can’t.”

How veterans have benefited

Roosevelt Shannon is a retired army veteran who moved to Grants Pass in 2016. He said he first went to the VSO for help getting disability benefits, and then kept coming back as he faced more health issues.

“I worked with Cindy to get all of that approved for disability,” said Shannon. “So now I’m at 100% disability, but all through the great work performed here in this office.”

Shannon was an accountant for many years after leaving the army. He’s spent time looking at federal Veterans Affairs expenditure reports, which show the summaries of money that the federal government pays out to veterans in every county in Oregon.

“When you really go beneath the covers for the VSO office, it is actually generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, in cash revenue, for the county,” Shannon said.

In 2023, around 7,500 Josephine County Veterans received almost a combined $150 million in pension and medical care benefits. Josephine receives almost $20,000 in benefits per veteran, which is one of the highest rates in the state.

Shannon said he would survive without the VSO, but it helps to get support navigating the complicated maze of forms and legal proceedings. He said that when he joined the military, it was one of the ways that a Black man like himself could afford to buy a house and go to college.

“When I went into the military, and even when I got out of the military, I knew that I would always be able to depend upon the VA for medical and some assistance, and they weren’t going to leave me behind. And the VSO offices are just part of that,” said Shannon.

Navy Veteran Mike Hurtt said the $3,900 he gets every month goes right back into the community.

“It’s not like I’m sitting on it or something, you know,” he said. “It goes towards bills. It goes towards gifts for our 13 grandchildren. It goes towards philanthropic things. It doesn’t sit in my pocket, it works inside the community.”

An uphill battle

Josephine County Commissioners John West and Herman Baertschiger wouldn’t respond to requests for comment. But, back at their budget meeting in June, West pointed out that every department in their county has its supporters, and there just isn’t as much money as they’d like to go around.

“The state says we have to have so many of these departments and we do have to fund them,” West said. “So I hope not everybody goes away mad tonight or thinks that this group up here isn’t taking it seriously, but we are.”

This tax levy would fully fund the Veterans Service Office for five years. It would charge property owners 5 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value. For the average homeowner the cost would be around $11 a year. That also means that any money the office currently gets from the county’s general fund could be spent elsewhere.

But the effort to get the ballot measure passed won’t be easy. Josephine County voters have a history of opposition to tax measures. It took many years for the county’s Sheriff’s Department to get a taxing district approved, and it passed by just a few hundred votes.

The voters pamphlet description for this measure contains one argument in opposition by self-described U.S. Army Veteran John Harding, who couldn’t be reached for comment. In the argument, Harding said the increase in taxes is far too high.

“I do not believe the burden of financial provision should fall upon the shoulders of countywide property owners by an increase in their already too high demand for taxes,” said Harding.

Supporters like Roosevelt Shannon say showing people the financial benefits that the office brings will convince them to support the levy.

“I think people would vote for the levy, because whatever the levy is, it’s going to be less than what it’s going to bring in,” Shannon said.

Shannon said he thinks about the office like an investment. Imagine investing $1 in something, and in return you got back a little over $300.

“I mean, where else can you get that kind of return on your investment, not in the stock market. At least, I don’t think you can,” he said.

Ballots will head to Oregon voters starting on October 16. They’ll need to be returned to a drop box or receive a postmark in the mail by 8 p.m. on election day, November 5.

This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.