Where I Stand: Veterans home should be high on Legislature list

Monday, Oct. 14, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Several local veterans have been working with our congressional delegation during recent years in an attempt to get the federal support needed for the project. The announcement last week by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., that he has a veterans skilled-nursing home in his plans and will seek the funds in January brought the entire issue into focus.

Getting the facility as close as possible to the new federal hospital at Nellis Air Force Base will add value to the project. It can't be placed out in the desert where new roads and utilities would add to its overall cost. The state of Nevada now has to move more aggressively to work out the placement and planning needed to make it become a reality.

Reid sees the need of 15 million federal dollars to build the $21.5 million home. This will require the 1997 Legislature to get moving and approve $6.5 million for the project. The day the Legislature opens in January, the Nevada commissioner for veterans affairs should appear with everything necessary, so the legislators can move forward and appropriate the necessary dollars.

It shouldn't be too difficult for the legislators to find this amount of money in the "surplus" pot of $250 million. Actually, there won't be this amount of money eligible for one-shot funding items, but even if only $100 million is available, certainly Nevada's 186,000 military veterans have earned a share of the pot. Large numbers of them believe that an extended nursing home is the share they want.

The booming growth in the Silver State has also drawn thousands of military veterans. The warm weather and nearby Nellis Air Force Base have been two of the main attractions. This isn't anything new, because some of Southern Nevada's prominent senior citizens first came here as military people during World War II and Korea. They liked what they saw and experienced and, later, returned here to live. Also, over the years, thousands of people stationed at Nellis have completed their military service around the world and then returned here to retire. These returnees have included some of our most distinguished citizens, who have contributed greatly to the development of this area.

Last month, I received a letter from veterans advocate Frank Perna, who was working on the project with the office of Rep. John Ensign, R-Nev. Perna wrote:

"Although there will be a vast improvement in veterans' health care in Nevada when the new VA outpatient clinic opens in early 1997, there are gaps in the care that must be addressed.

"The most serious is the lack of a veterans home (skilled-nursing facility) to accommodate the aged veteran and military retirees. Nevada now has the highest per-capita population of veterans and military retirees in the U.S., 19 percent of Nevada's total population, and is growing by about 15,000 per year. ...

"Since the Nellis federal hospital was built, as a joint venture, there have been improvements made in the services offered. They were implemented after the complaints mounted, and the federal congressional delegation intervened to encourage inter-agency cooperation and additional funding to provide more medical specialists.

"There is still a void for medical specialists to serve the aged veteran and military retirees and there should be an expansion of the hospital to accommodate them. This would be far more desirable than the proposal to build a wing on UMC. ..."

Well, Frank, the game is progressing, and now's the time for state bureaucrats and the veterans to get their act together. It's obvious our entire congressional delegation doesn't need any convincing. The next move has to be made in Carson City, with all factions of Nevada veterans groups agreeing and working together in a solid front. Too often, these factions lose their effect by having unnecessary internal bickering and fighting.

MIKE O'CALLAGHAN, a former two-term governor of Nevada, is executive editor of the Las Vegas SUN.