LITTLE ROCK — The state is closing the Little Rock Veterans Home, which has been under scrutiny since May for collecting about $600,000 in illegal fees from 18 of its most disabled residents, for missing inventory and for years of lax oversight.
Cissy Rucker, director of the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs, told the home’s 60 residents Thursday that caseworkers with Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System, the state Office of Long Term Care and her agency would help them find VA-approved nursing homes or assisted-living facilities of their choosing to move into.
“The home is very expensive, and because we cannot accept Medicaid or Medicare there, the funding is really short,” Rucker said Thursday. “The home has had financial issues for some time. It’s just one of those things where the building needs repair. ... You put everything together and you realize we simply cannot afford this anymore.”
Matt DeCample, spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe, called the home’s closure a necessary move.
“It’s a result of the status of the home itself, the physical status of the building, the budgetary requirements to sustain it, both in an operational sense and a capital sense of what you would have to do to that building [to continue operating in it],” De-Cample said. “It just appears that we need to find better options for those veterans.”
Rucker’s department is assessing what repairs and renovations would be required to keep the home open, a list she expects will be extensive and expensive.
The home’s actual closure date will depend on how long it takes to find appropriate and acceptable homes for the veterans, Rucker said, classifying it as a “long-term process.” Some residents may be more difficult to relocate because of their physical needs or financial limitations. After the residents are all relocated, the state will then inventory the building and begin the closure.
The federal VA pays for the care of qualified veterans in state homes and private nursing homes that meet its standard of care. That funding won’t change with a move to a different home. Some veterans receive more VA per-diem funding than others, as rates are based on service records, disabilities and other qualifications.
Beebe appointed Rucker as director of the state VA department last month, one week after he asked former director Dave Fletcher to resign over the allegations of illegal fee-collection, missing inventory and other administrative concerns. Rucker, a retired colonel from the Arkansas Army National Guard, is in her fourth week overseeing the agency.
“When you have a job to do, you get it done,” she said of the quick decision to close the home. “When you’re moving people, that is never an easy decision.”
Closing the home, at 4701 W. Charles Bussey Ave., will displace the 77 who work there in staff and nursing positions. Rucker said the long timeline for closure will give them time to find new employment with the help of planned job fairs and a phase-down plan.
Beebe, legislators and veterans-organization leaders have all questioned over the past six months whether the Little Rock home should continue operating.
“I think Col. Rucker did the right thing by shutting down the Little Rock Veterans Home. The home was in deplorable condition, and there were obviously questions about its operations as well,” state Rep. John Edwards, D-Little Rock, said Thursday. “My big concern has been, ‘Is this the business we need to stay in?’ And if we can’t do it the best way possible, then we need to be looking at other options.”
In February, Edwards posed that question to the Veterans Commission. The commission is an advisory board appointed by the governor for the sole purpose of overseeing the state veterans homes.
After hearing from Edwards, commissioners vowed to meet more often than quarterly, as required by law, to discuss the legislator’s concern. They have not met since then; the next meeting is set for July 10.
Rucker sent an update to the commission members Thursday detailing the closing, but none of the commissioners responded. A reporter’s calls to commission Chairman Tom Thomas were not returned Thursday.
When Beebe appointed Rucker, he said one of her principal duties would be to determine whether the state could afford to stay in the veteransnursing-home business after the discovery that money was being transferred from the Fayetteville Veterans Home and two state veterans cemetery accounts to help pay bills at the Little Rock home.
Last year $400,000 was transferred from other accounts to help fund the Little Rock home. Earlier this year, the agency failed to pay several food suppliers, resulting in vendors suspending the accounts and food service to the home, according to e-mails between state VA department employees obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette through the Freedom of Information Act.
“I’d like to move away from all of that,” Rucker said of the money transfers. “I would like to work within our budget if possible.”
The unfolding budget crisis, which former director Fletcher kept under wraps, has caught the eye of several state legislators.
Rep. Jane English, R- Sherwood, submitted last week a proposal to the House Committee on Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs requesting a legislative audit of the veterans department to look at everything from standards of care at the Little Rock and Fayetteville veterans homes to looking for alternative funding sources.
English said Thursday that she wondered why no one disclosed the funding problem over the past several years.
“I think we need to know what happened,” she said. “I think we need to know how this thing went through four budget cycles with none of us knowing about it.”
In that time, Fletcher never asked for more state funding for the Little Rock home.
English also said the state needs to look at the feasibility of building a new veterans home, determining not just a funding source and the ability to run it but also whether there is a need or desire to have such a facility.
“That will always be an option,” DeCample said of building a new home. “But that’s going to be something you look at once you have a better potential of capital funds, with which our current budget we don’t have.”
Edwards, the state legislator from Little Rock, has submitted a proposal to look at the feasibility of the state’s collecting lease royalties from gas companies drilling in the state’s navigable waterways as a funding source.
He also has requested a meeting with Attorney General Dustin McDaniel to discuss the possibility of using settlement money from state lawsuits to pay matching fees for a 65 percent federal grant offered by the VA for construction of state veterans homes.
“We’re coming into a very tough fiscal environment in the next session. ... I’m very realistic about the issues that we face. But I think these are the kind of questions that are incumbent upon me and other legislators to ask to try to see what is possible,” he said. “If we do nothing, then nothing is possible. If we do explore what is possible, we have results we could all be proud of.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/22/2012