Two months after an IT hiccup at the Department of Veterans Affairs left a significant portion of GI Bill recipients without their anticipated payments for school and housing, some advocates have a message for the VA: Turn the GI Bill hotline back on.
Those missing payments in the wake of the rollout of a new processing system are spouses or children of veterans who have died, are missing, or have a permanent and total service-connected disability — grouped together under the VA’s Chapter 35. Up to 75,000 of these claims may be unpaid, according to Ashlynne Haycock-Lohmann, director of Government and Legislative Affairs for the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors.
And while VA officials lay the blame for the protracted payments delay largely with congressional Democrats, whom the administration holds responsible for the government shutdown that began Oct. 1, multiple groups are expressing frustration with the department’s own actions and failure to find a solution.
“VA deployed a new benefit delivery system in August and anticipated having the ability to pay staff overtime and deploy automation solutions as needed to ensure a smooth transition and process fall enrollments on a timely basis,” Peter Kasperowicz, a VA spokesman, told Military Times in an emailed statement. “When the Democrats’ shutdown hit, VA was deprived of these resources.”
He added that federal law required the GI Bill hotline, which is typically used to identify and address payment issues, to be turned off during the shutdown. VA anticipates the pay issue won’t be fully resolved until late November or early December, Kasperowicz said.
That’s not satisfactory to Haycock-Lohmann.
“The shutdown is not the cause of this, and it needs to be very clear that the reason that this happened is because VA’s infrastructure failed, and they chose not to tell us until after the shutdown started,” she said. “VA could have told us in August.”
She added that affected veterans never got clear communication about what was happening due to a communications plan that was upended after VA staff got furloughed in October.
An Oct. 9 letter to VA Secretary Doug Collins from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, and Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., the ranking members of the Senate and House Veterans Affairs Committees, expressed “serious concern” at the missed payments and gave the VA an Oct. 13 deadline to provide an explanation, outline the scope of the problem and explain its communications plan.
“These payments are essential, mandatory funds that veterans and their families rely on for food, rent or mortgage payments, immediate needs, and financial stability,” the lawmakers wrote.
A staff member with Blumenthal’s office said VA had not yet sent a response to the letter. They added that VA had told congressional staff in August about a glitch that would affect 900 Chapter 35 students, saying the students had been contacted and the issue remediated. But no further information had been forthcoming even as the issue appears to be much larger, and they believed VA has not done any outreach about the matter.
Will Hubbard, the vice president for Veterans and Military Policy at the organization Veterans Education Success and an architect of the current “Forever GI Bill,” has been tracking the nonpayment issue closely since he was alerted to the problem by congressional staff.
“There’s been no mass communications plan; there’s no press release; there’s no public anything,” Hubbard said. “And that’s really been a fundamental issue.”
For Hubbard, the problem also fit a pattern of major VA platform or tech rollouts affecting GI Bill beneficiaries that took place right before the start of the fall semester, when enrollments were surging and tuition payments were coming due.
Hubbard wants assurances from VA that the rollout timing issue will be addressed for the future. He’s also concerned that the VA’s projected timeline for fixing the current problem is optimistic, and expressed concern about the “destabilizing” impacts of missing payments that roll into next semester.
“What I’m most worried about are the housing payment elements of this issue,” he said. “Because, you know, a school might be flexible, and I applaud that, but I suspect that landlords, their patience is going to run thin eventually. It’s bad, obviously, to get dropped from school, but it’s life changing if you’re put out on the street.”
TAPS, meanwhile, is calling for the restoration of the GI Bill hotline and a surge in claims processors to accelerate resolution.
“What they should be doing is bringing back the call center, finding a way to fund the call center. Bring those employees back,” Haycock-Lohmann said. “In future shutdown plans, make it very clear that the GI Bill hotline needs to be considered an essential program, and they need to bring back every processor right now.”
TAPS staff said they had seen success in “back channel” communication with congressional officials and VA Education Services over specific hardship cases to restore payments. Haycock-Lohmann said all affected students should know that schools are legally prohibited from dropping them over missed GI Bill payments. And, she said, survivors facing issues can reach TAPS for help with their case at [email protected].
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