To prepare for Georgia’s 2025 Legislative Session, lawmakers traveled the Peach State collecting citizen input on specific needs.
The tour included a stop at the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center in Augusta. It was a joint meeting by the members of the House Defense and Veterans Affairs Committee and the Senate Veterans, Military, and Homeland Security Committee.
“Our intent was to go to areas where there was a pretty heavily veteran population and discuss this issue that’s very relevant to veterans, and that’s how they’re receiving their benefits from the Veterans Administration, and how the state of Georgia can assist in that effort,” Rep. Josh Bonner (R-District 73), Chairman of the House committee, explained for ABD.
Among those who made a presentation was Patricia Ross, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Veterans’ Services. She said, because of the large number of veterans in metro Augusta, her department has three local offices, one at 950 15th Street, a second at 1101 15th Street, and the third at 5170-B Wrightsboro Road in Grovetown.
“There are lots of folks out there who truly want to help our veterans and their families, but there are also some unsavory actors who want to take advantage of our veterans,” she said. “I know last legislative session, we had looked at two bills, kind of competing, as far as whether we would open up Georgia to allow non-accredited agencies to assist with veterans’ claims, or whether we would try and restrict that through the AGs (Attorney General) office and mainly through the Consumer Fair Practice Act.”
Bonner said the largest discussion within the veteran’s community now is related to health and disability benefits. The legislature is trying to determine if the state wants to allow for-profit companies to operate in Georgia to assist veterans in receiving those benefits.
“Federal law right now says that you can’t do that, but there’s no penalty. So, companies operate throughout the U.S. and assist veterans, and they charge a fee for different structures, that kind of thing. So, what we’re trying to do is determine whether or not we want to pass legislation that completely outlaws that practice in the state of Georgia, or if we want to allow those companies to operate under a regulated framework to ensure that veterans don’t get scammed essentially and cheated out of their benefits.”
Committee members also heard from Tony Dobbins of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 5080. He is also an Adjutant of the state VFW organization. He told the panel the VFW is trying to help male and female veterans of all ages.
“We find with the Vietnam era veteran in particular, they feel that they were taking things away from folks. We have a hard time convincing them that you earn this, you’re not taking away from somebody else,” he said. “And so, the older veteran is what we really concentrate on a lot, because the younger veterans are getting some of that information while transitioning out of the military.”
Dobbins said one thing that might help would be for lawmakers to approve legislation putting an accredited Service Officer in each of the state’s more than 90 VFW posts.
Bonner said information and suggestions the joint committee collected at the sessions in Atlanta, Warner Robbins, and Augusta will be used to create legislation targeting the concerns of veterans or modify existing legislation.
The 2025 session of the Georgia Legislature convenes on January 13, 2025.
More information about the Georgia Department of Veterans’ Services is available at https://veterans.georgia.gov/.
Learn about the Georgia VFW, or to find a local post, go to https://georgiavfw.org/.
