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11/30/2009 Firing of DVA secretary means veterans lose tireless advocate By Michael Trepanier The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com. Camelot is dead. The dream is over. Veterans in Wisconsin have lost their biggest advocate. When the Board of Veterans Affairs recently voted to dump John Scocos as the secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs, they made it clear their priorities are aligned with inside politics rather than with the veterans community as a whole. The board has no round table and follows no code of chivalry. When Governor Jim Doyle claims the board made its decision to dump Scocos independently of the governor, it makes a mockery of the truth. The fact is that Doyle never wanted Scocos to be the secretary and worked relentlessly, since 2003, to replace exiting board members with political hacks whose sole mission was to get rid of Scocos -- so much for nonpartisanship. Of the approximately 427,000 veterans in this state, one-fourth of them are from the Milwaukee area. Yet four of the seven board members/appointees are from Dane County. Not only is Doyle pitting Republicans versus Democrats, he is rewarding Madison Democrats over Milwaukee Democrats. While the governor has been busy playing insider baseball, the rest of the state’s veterans have been shut out of the process. Where is the representation in the northeast, northern central, southeast and southwest parts of Wisconsin on this board? For well over a decade, Scocos’ time in Wisconsin state government has been one of the few shining examples of nonpartisan accountability in a time when most citizens have had reason to doubt. As former Assembly sergeant-at-arms, Scocos did a major re-haul of staff operations to professionalize the office while simultaneously saving the state tax dollars. More critically, Scocos was the former Assembly chief clerk who began revising in-house personnel policies to establish more accountability even before the notorious caucus scandal broke. At the time, Assembly Minority Leader Spencer Black, D-Madison, praised Scocos for being fair to Democrats despite what he said was “a lot of partisan pressure” from Republicans. When Scocos began his tenure as secretary of the department in 2003, he was the one who identified the Veterans Trust Fund was slated for insolvency in FY2007. He tirelessly enacted administrative changes and worked externally with the state Legislature to successfully prolong its solvency to approximately FY2012. At the same time, he created a windfall of new benefits for Wisconsin’s veterans, surviving spouses and dependents. In line with the Knights of the Round Table code to give help and relief to widows, his vision included the Wisconsin Veterans and Surviving Spouses Property Tax Credit to make sure disabled veterans and their surviving spouses on fixed incomes are not kicked out of their homes due to being unable to afford property taxes. It also led to the passage of the Wisconsin GI Bill, which gave a full tuition remission to qualifying veterans, surviving spouses and children between the ages of 17 through 25. Immediately upon returning from his second tour of Iraq in three years, Scocos identified the failings of the last budget bill, which passed into law while he was deployed. Before he left for his second deployment, he warned that the solvency of the trust fund needed to be addressed in this budget, that the advent of the federal Post-9/11 bill would lead to major cuts in the Wisconsin GI Bill, and that more outreach was needed in order to be fully prepared for the upcoming redeployment of over 3,000 members of the Wisconsin National Guard’s 32nd Infantry Brigade Combat team. Now that he is gone, the board can quietly pretend it didn’t fail the veterans on these issues. Although the board often told the secretary that he was not the one to speak on behalf the department, they never provided their own vision statement regarding these issues, they didn’t talk about these issues in their recent board meetings and they were nowhere to be found while the budget negotiations were in progress. Instead of keeping an eye out for the true needs of the veterans, the board was too busy undermining Scocos with political games. The veterans in this state should be incensed that while Scocos was not in the country to defend himself, the board actively supported Acting Secretary Ken Black in requesting a Wisconsin Department of Justice criminal investigation into alleged “unauthorized spending” by the department. With the investigation still pending, they then fired the commandant at King, Bill Crowley, which ruined his reputation in his community. They also managed to use the pending DOJ investigation to convince the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to run an extensive audit on the veterans homes, which is still ongoing. Finally, when the DOJ investigation finally cleared the department of all criminal charges, the Board misled the public on what the DOJ report said by firing Scocos over “miscommunications” within the agency that the report clearly shows stemmed primarily from Ken Black (whom the board just voted to replace Scocos as secretary) and Ken Abrahamsen, the agency’s budget director. While Scocos believed in the concept of the Round Table, where he respected stakeholder involvement (i.e., veterans service organizations, county veterans service officers, etc.), the board often reminded the department that it should only take orders from Governor Doyle. Just like all other worthy issues drowned out in the political process, veterans are now clearly taking their place behind special interests. And just like Camelot fades into distant memory, the veterans will continue to be more and more forgotten. I am just glad, that while this battle was lost, John Scocos and I (both Iraq War veterans) can hold our heads high that we fought, not on our knees, but while standing up for our veterans. -- Trepanier is the former executive assistant for the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs. He was was fired within five minutes after former Secretary John Scocos was fired by the board. |
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