Senate vows to keep veterans cemetery open

State senators were adamant Tuesday that they never intended to short-change a new veterans cemetery by not budgeting maintenance costs required to keep it open. They ordered the state’s budget office to come up with the money immediately.

Last week, Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration complained that the lack of $200,000 in the legislature’s budget could lead to closing the East Carolina State Veterans Cemetery, which opened in 2015, and potentially force the state to repay the federal government a $5 million grant to build the facility near Goldsboro.

State Sen. Don Davis, a Democrat from Greenville, said families of veterans were alarmed to learn about the possible cemetery closing.

“We owe it to our veterans to look them in the eye and tell them the truth,” Davis said. “And the first thing we need to tell them is we’re not closing the cemetery. ... My friends, we need to make this right.”

Davis said the state Office of Budget and Management had been told in two separate directives to make sure the maintenance costs were budgeted but it turns out they were not.

Senate Leader Phil Berger’s office released a statement saying “an apparent misunderstanding of state law caused Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration to leave that funding out of their earlier base budget proposal to the legislature.”

The General Assembly provided $250,000 to cover operating costs in 2015 on a one-time basis in each fiscal year of the biennium, and ordered receipts be used to cover the costs afterward, according to Berger. The state budget office didn’t update the base budget to account for nearly $1 million in revenues from the state’s four veteran’s cemeteries, the statement said.

Berger’s office also says the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs has about $500,000 in unspent funds that could have been used.

Cooper’s office deflected the criticism by noting the governor’s budget included funding for veterans cemeteries that the legislature’s budget did not.

“Governor Cooper’s proposed budget clearly funded $600,000 for veterans’ cemeteries,” spokesman Ford Porter said in an email. “While it’s good that legislators now want to keep this property open, casting blame and playing shell games with the budget of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs is not in the best interest of North Carolina Veterans and military families. Veterans and their families deserve our gratitude and respect, not partisan budget games.”

The Senate’s directive to the budget office on Tuesday was written into an amendment to a bill providing education opportunities for state National Guard members.

Larry Hall, secretary of the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, last week said legislative budget-writers had failed to heed his request for the cemetery money.

This story was originally published June 27, 2017 at 7:13 PM with the headline "Senate vows to keep veterans cemetery open."