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Tennessee General Assembly Adjourns for the Year

Two important announcements affecting Clarksville-Montgomery County

VA to Expedite Claims Decisions for Veterans Who Have Waited a Year or More

Tennessee State Representative - House District 67Tennessee State Representative Joe PittsNashville , TN – Tennessee General Assembly adjourned Friday.

“The House of Representatives and the State Senate adjourned on Friday, April 19th,” said Tennessee State Representative Joe Pitts (D-Clarksville).  “Over the next several days, we will send an analysis of the bills, budget items and other items of interest from the first session of the 108th General Assembly.”

Tennessee Department of Children’s Services Foster Care Awareness Event in Clarksville

On May 18th, 2013 from 12:00pm to 4:00pm at Barksdale Elementary School, located at 1920 Madison Street, the Tennessee Department of Children’s service will host this important event to promote awareness and to recruit prospective foster parents.

In 2011, there were an estimated 400,500 children in foster care nationally. In Montgomery County, we have more than 250 children in state custody from our county. There are limited foster care homes for these 250 plus children.

“I encourage anyone that has an interest in this issue to attend this very informative event,” Pitts said.

Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System (TCRS) will no longer issue paper checks

The Social Security Administration recently announced that beginning in March 2013, all benefits will be made by electronic means. TCRS has adopted this schedule and will no longer issue monthly retirement benefits by check.

If TCRS has not received the authorization to direct deposit a retiree’s benefit payment by April, 2013, a debit card will be issued and mailed to his/her home address and all future TCRS benefit payments will be made by adding the monthly benefit to the debit card balance.

“This affects all retired state employees, most retired teachers, all local government employees, if the local government has opted in to the TCRS program,” said Pitts.

Should you have any questions, please contact the Financial Services division at 800.770.8277, option 3 or 615.741.4913. You may also reach Treasurer David Lillard’s office at 615.741.2956.

VA to Expedite Claims Decisions for Veterans Who Have Waited a Year or More

The Department of Veterans Affairs announced today it is implementing an initiative to expedite compensation claims decisions for Veterans who have waited one year or longer.

Effective today, VA claims raters will make provisional decisions on the oldest claims in inventory, which will allow Veterans to begin collecting compensation benefits more quickly, if eligible. Veterans will be able to submit additional evidence for consideration a full year after the provisional rating, before VA issues a final decision.

“Too many veterans wait too long for a decision, and this has never been acceptable,” said VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. “That is why we are implementing an aggressive plan to eliminate the backlog in 2015. This initiative is the right thing to do now for veterans who have waited the longest.”

Provisional decisions will be based on all evidence provided to date by the Veteran or obtained on their behalf by VA. If a VA medical examination is needed to decide the claim, it will be ordered and expedited.

“Issuing provisional decisions not only provides Veterans with applicable benefits much more quickly, but also gives them an additional one-year safety net to submit further evidence should it become available. Our door will remain open and if a Veteran has additional evidence, their case will be fast tracked,” said Allison Hickey, Undersecretary for Benefits.

If any increase is determined to be warranted based on the additional evidence received, benefits will be retroactive to the date the claim was initially filed.  The initiative protects the Veteran’s right to appeal the decision. If no further evidence is received within that year, VBA will inform the Veteran that their rating is final and provide information on the standard appeals process, which can be found at http://www.bva.va.gov/

Throughout this initiative, VA will continue to prioritize claims for homeless Veterans and those claiming financial hardship, the terminally ill, former Prisoners of War, Medal of Honor recipients, and Veterans filing Fully Developed Claims.  More information about filing Fully Developed Claims is available at: http://www.benefits.va.gov/transformation/fastclaims/

Claims for Wounded Warriors separating from the military for medical reasons will continue to be handled separately and on a priority basis with the Department of Defense through the Integrated Disability Evaluation System (IDES).  Wounded Warriors separating through IDES currently receive VA compensation benefits in an average of 61 days following their separation from service.

As a result of this initiative, metrics used to track benefits claims will experience significant fluctuations.  The focus on processing the oldest claims will cause the overall measure of the average length of time to complete a claim – currently 286 days – to skew, rising significantly in the near term because of the number of old claims that will be completed

Over time, as the backlog of oldest claims is cleared and more of the incoming claims are processed electronically through VA’s new paperless processing system, VA’s average time to complete claims will significantly improve.  In addition, the average days pending metric – or the average age of a claim in the inventory – will decrease, since the oldest claims will no longer be part of the inventory.

While compensation claims are pending, eligible Veterans are able to receive healthcare and other benefits from VA.  Veterans who have served in recent conflicts are eligible for 5 years of free healthcare from VA. Currently, over 55% of returning Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans are using VA health care, a rate of utilization greater than previous generations of Veterans.

Veterans can learn more about disability benefits on the joint Department of Defense—VA web portal eBenefits at:  https://www.ebenefits.va.gov/ebenefits-portal/ebenefits.portal

If you have questions about any item above or other issues of concern, please call me at 615/741-2043, or email me at rep.joe.pitts@capitol.tn.gov

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