Vets' Home funding fails

For the second year in a row, members of the Wyoming House Freedom Caucus and its allies in the Senate snubbed American veterans, refusing to fund the Veterans’ Home of Wyoming renovation project.

The project included updates to bring the facility up to Americans with Disabilities Act standards and the construction of private bathrooms for each resident. The project to update and modernize the aging facility has been on the Wyoming Department of Health’s radar since 2013 when a facility assessment rated the facility as “fair.” The department’s main concerns are that residents must share bathrooms and that the wings constructed in 1941 and 1973 are not Americans with Disabilities Act compliant.

Construction was originally planned and a bid advertisement was published in spring 2023, at which time the Wyoming Department of Health expected that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs would eventually fund 65% of the project with state facility construction grant monies. In the various iterations of the funding bills both last year and this year, the intent was to front-load construction with state dollars and then to replenish those state dollars once the federal funds were received.

After watching the funding measure die an unceremonious death in the Senate Appropriations Committee last year, Sen. Barry Crago, R-Buffalo, and Rep. Marilyn Connolly, R-Buffalo, pursued multiple funding measures this session.

Gov. Mark Gordon included $79 million for the project in his supplemental budget recommendation. Funds for the project were separately included in HB 258, the state-funded capital construction bill. Finally, Crago and Connolly each sponsored bills in their respective chambers to fund the project.

Connolly’s bill was never introduced in the House. A mirror bill by Crago was introduced in the Senate and referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee where committee Chairman Sen. Tim Salazar, R-Riverton, made sure that it did not get voted on and died in committee. Likewise, after being referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee, HB 258 died in Salazar’s committee. And last week, Senate President Bo Biteman announced that Senate leadership would not pass a supplemental budget this year.

Four different measures to fund the renovation of the Veterans’ Home of Wyoming all failed.

We are grateful to Connolly and Crago who have rightly recognized that renovating the facility is the right and honorable thing to do to thank veterans for their service. Fiscally, Gordon, Crago and Connolly are correct that the project will only become more expensive to complete as time passes.

Talk is cheap, and that has never been more evident than in the last two sessions of the Wyoming legislature. All the American flag pins; red, white and blue emblazoned neckties and scarves; and flag waving in the world amount to nothing but cheap, jingoistic, dimestore patriotism.

Veterans should not be required to share bathrooms or face restricted access to entire wings of the Veterans’ Home of Wyoming due to physical disabilities. It is past time that we show our veterans the respect they have earned through serving our country. If we value veterans’ service at all, we should find a way to fund the necessary renovations of the Veterans’ Home of Wyoming.