PA House Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness — 2026-07-29

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'm Jared Solomon, Chair of Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Chair Gillum, would you lead us off with the pledge?

Chairman Solomon. Here.

Here.

Only.

Here.

Here.

Leave.

Leave. Representative Monroe, leave.

Yes, she's online.

Representative Sappy, leave.

Here.

Representative Webster, leave. Chairman Gillen, here.

Online

Leave

Representative Ham

Online

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Yeah, online

Stender

Thanks Jamie So we are here to exercise our powers under Rule 45 under our House rules to remain ever watchful and really to build a relationship with our great folks at DMVA when it comes to guideline changes, statutory changes, regulatory changes. And hopefully this is the first of many opportunities to work with you as you begin to do a look at other regulatory changes you would like to make. and it also gives the members the ability to ask questions on these proposed changes, but also to talk about what they might like to see and to begin that dialogue. So we interested to hear your comments on both your process and your product And of course this should be led by questions and comments from the members Chair Gillen Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for all those that are in the audience and those that are participating today. The testimony is going to be a hearing. This is not legislation that we're moving relative to our veterans' issues and sustainability of programs. is of critical importance to me and to this committee. When you think about the global war on terrorism, it's gone on for 20-plus years, and obviously veterans' needs have changed, and so we want to keep up with what's going on out there and continue, as far as I'm concerned, to continue war on terror. We want to make sure that our veterans are taken care of as they sustain injuries during the course of these conflicts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Chair Gillum. We welcome Rep. Cooper online. Thanks for joining us. Gentlemen, we're going to begin with Mr. Keith Graham, and then we're going to turn it over to Jeff King. Please both provide your comments, and then we'll turn it over to the members for questions and comments. Gentlemen.

Good morning, Chairman and Committee members. My name is Jeff King. As Mr. Graham mentioned, I'm the Director of the Bureau of Veterans Programs at the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. I've worked in our State Veterans Benefit Program since joining the Department in 2019, and I've served as director of veterans programs since the position was created as part of a reorganization last year in June 2025. I'm a veteran of the U.S. Army and the Army National Guard, and I retired in 2015 after over 25 years of military service from the U.S. Coast Guard where I served as a judge advocate. I'm both a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs accredited attorney and a veteran service officer, and I'm a member of the Bars of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and the State Veterans Commission, through my bureau, are responsible for the administration of eight separate state veterans benefit programs. These include the five programs that are currently codified in Title 43, PA Code Chapter 5, and subject to this rulemaking. the Disabled Veterans Real Estate Tax Exemption the Amputee and Paralyzed Veterans Pension Program Sir if you could move that microphone close to you so all the members can hear How this Better There you go

I'll start over. The Disabled Veterans Real Estate Tax Exemption, the Amputee and Paralyzed Veterans Pension Program, the Blind Veterans Pension Program, the Educational Gratuity Program, and Veterans Temporary Assistance, as well as three programs not included in the current rulemaking. Those are the Deceased Soldiers Dependence Pension, the Deceased Soldiers Dependence Tuition Waiver, and the Military Family Relief Assistance Program. This rulemaking will delete and reserve the current Title 43 PA Code Chapter 5 and replace it with a new Chapter 5A. We also work very closely with each of our state partners, like the Departments of Agriculture, Health, Labor and Industry, and Transportation, the Office of Administration, and the Game and Fish and Boat Commissions, as well as our county partners, to ensure consistency in the administration of all other state and local veterans programs and services across the Commonwealth. So our regulations indirectly affect how those agencies may interpret and apply their own authorizing legislation as well. I'm happy to briefly outline each of the programs for you if you'd like, or we can certainly move into questions at this time.

Will do. So the Disabled Veterans Real Estate Tax Exemption Program currently provides a total exemption to property taxes. Those are our annual county, municipal, and school district taxes to just over 28,000 disabled veterans and surviving spouses. Those exemptions obviously differ in value from property to property, but by applying Pennsylvania's median real estate tax paid, we estimate that those exemptions currently total around $96 million a year in tax relief. Eligibility for the program is dictated by the Pennsylvania Constitution. Consistent with the state constitution, need for a tax exemption is determined by the State Veterans Commission. the need test for a tax exemption is and always has been an income expense assessment under this test need is controlled by the definitions of income and expense act 27 of 2024 which excluded veterans disability related payments from income in need-based state programs for example, increased the beneficiary population in this program by excluding a significant source of income for almost every applicant. Aside from that one recent change in Act 27, income for the need test has long been defined as income from all sources, or gross income. Gross income is a challenging figure to determine, though, since it necessarily includes income that's otherwise non-reportable. It also obviously includes all manner of reportable income, like interest, dividends, distributions, rental income, royalties, and pass-through business income, which requires applicants to submit not just an IRS Form 1040, but all the schedules, W-2s, and 1099s supporting that return for a proper adjudication. we often hear as do you that the application process for the real estate tax exemption is overly complicated and inefficient That's largely due to the multiple eligibility requirements, but we also realize that it's the financial need requirements that mostly frustrate applicants. So we placed a priority in the rulemaking on simplifying the need test. We were able to do that after due consideration by shifting the definition of income from gross income to federal adjusted gross income. This allows applicants to take advantage of all the above-the-line exemptions and deductions offered in the federal tax code, and it simplifies and streamlines both the application and adjudication procedures by cutting the paperwork requirements back to just the two-page Form 1040 itself, Allowing applicants to take advantage of the various adjustments to income also serves to promote disabled veteran-owned small business by not holding the business expenses against the veteran's need for tax exemption. Participation and support from the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania was critical to this part of the rulemaking. Eligibility criteria for the amputee and paralyzed veterans pension and the blind veterans pension are found in statute. The pensions currently pay, as you know, $150 per month above and beyond federal disability compensation to approximately 2,500 amputee and paralyzed veterans and to 100 blind veterans. In fiscal year 2025-2026, this amounted to combined pension payments of just over $4,655,000. The regulatory changes in these two programs were minor. I should note here, though, that we've experienced an 18% increase in the amputee and paralyzed veterans pension population over the last five years without any legislative changes in our administration of the program whatsoever. We attribute those increases again to the surge in wartime veterans, as Chairman Gillen mentioned, but also to recent changes in federal law, like the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017 and the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson honoring our promise to address comprehensive toxics, or the PACT Act of 2022, both of which have enhanced and simplified the federal disability compensation process. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports that Pennsylvania veterans have filed over 225,520 disability claims since the PACT Act took effect in 2022. That represents recent disability claims from over one-third of our entire veteran population. It's important to recognize that those changes in federal veterans law and disability trends at the federal level are clearly impacting our state programming, too, without respect to any action on the part of the General Assembly or the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. To that point, we've also experienced a 235% beneficiary increase in the educational gratuity program over the last five years. In fiscal year 2025-2026, we dispersed almost $479,000 in gratuities, which translates to about 479 children supported. supported. By contrast, in fiscal year 2021-2022, we were supporting about 129 students. What's 2021 is that the children of our earliest global war on terror veterans, those who entered the service in the early 2000s, have started coming of age for higher education and vocational training. So in this program, we're seeing the effects of those enhanced federal disability compensation procedures, coupled with a clear demographic shift. The eligible population in this program also grew as a result of Act 27 of 2024. Act 27 excluded from any needs assessment for any commonwealth program all federal or state payments or benefits to a veteran that are directly related to the veteran service-connected disability. This exclusion from the needs assessment had the effect of increasing the probability of eligibility for an applicant. Our focus with the educational gratuity program was on enhancements to the need test again. We also worked with the Division of Veterans and Military Education at the PA Department of Education to create a new process for approving educational institutions for the gratuity. Veterans temporary assistance, lastly, is the last benefit program addressed in the final form regulation. This program, as you know, provides critical cash assistance drawn from the Veterans Trust Fund to a very broad cross-section of our veteran population. Because of the generosity of our fellow Pennsylvanians, we are able to grant on average between $600,000 and $700,000 per year in assistance directly to Pennsylvania veterans and their surviving dependents. This program was created by Act 109 of 2016 to replace the former Veterans Emergency Assistance Program. What you'll find in the current Chapter 5 are outdated regulations for the former program. Guidelines for Veterans Temporary Assistance were issued in 2016, and the program's been administered in accordance with those guidelines since, but it was important for the department to delete reference to the earlier program and finally codify the administrative procedures for Veterans Temporary Assistance. There are no other significant changes between the current guidelines and the final form regulation, so we do not anticipate any impact on the program itself. Beyond these more notable changes, our overarching intent with this rulemaking was to promote consistency, accuracy, efficiency, and transparency in the administrative procedures for our state veterans benefit programs. We feel we've achieved that objective with the final form regulation. I want to thank you again. We appreciate the opportunity to discuss this important rulemaking with you. I also thank you for your continued support of Pennsylvania veterans and for your support of my teammates back at the department who work hard every day to make sure our state veterans benefit programs work fairly and efficiently for the service members, veterans, and families we serve. Mr. Graham and I are happy to take any questions you may have for us at this time.

So I think to clarify your question a little bit, sir, if you don't mind, there's a deed issue there as well. We need to understand who the principal holder is of the property to do that. We're defining the principal dwelling as a structure, including outbuildings, used as the applicant's primary place of habitation and the parcel of land on which the structure is located. So if the veteran is the deeded holder of that, he would be eligible for the tax relief, should he meet the other requirements. If the cousin is the principal on the deed, he would not be eligible for it, even though the veteran lives there full time.

Yeah.

It depends. Of course. This question that you've raised does cause a lot of confusion across the county. So just to back up, one of the things that we've attempted to do with the regulation is to provide some consistency, not just in the regulatory procedure itself, but for the counties to rely on in answering these difficult questions. I think the gist of your question, if I may, is whether a person who's renting rooms in a home out to another or just the – so, right, the veteran who owns the home is eligible for a total tax, a complete tax exemption on the property. There is no other means currently of apportioning that tax exemption between members in the household. One of the questions that we receive very often from county assessment offices is he's renting out a room in the house. And under, for example, under the homestead exclusion law, you would apportion that out. A county assessment office would apportion that out to say 75% residence and 25% commercial purposes, something like that, right? So that would affect the taxes that the person pays. But there was a Commonwealth Court case in 2008 Vanderheef v the Office of Susquehanna County Board of Assessment Appeals that the Commonwealth Court ruled that the counties have no authority under the act to limit a tax exemption under this program neither for the size or the use of the property, right, and that only the State Veterans Commission under the need assessment, under its constitutional authority to conduct a need assessment has the authority to limit that, the extent or the value of an exemption.

Yeah, I think that's easily done. It's something we currently do anyway. As you stated, you know, there's 67 different counties, and they're subject to 67 different interpretations. We do provide overarching policy guidance on those type of things, but each county assessment office will have to make ultimately their own decision, right? We validate the eligibility requirement, and then the county is responsible for the action of it. I would also add that we do currently obviously work very closely together with the assessment offices, so we're happy to take calls from them and to engage with them. I was engaging with one of the county assessment offices just yesterday on the very question that you rose, right? So we do that. Our first movement toward providing them some better consistency here is the regulations themselves, right? So if you were to look at Chapter 5 and Title 43 today, you won't see an answer, an easy answer to that question. And I think the reason for that was because we have long deferred to the counties in those questions, right? We wanted the county assessment offices and the county boards of assessment appeals to decide those questions for themselves without any undue pressure from the state. But the Vanderheft case in 2008 totally flipped that approach that we had where we understood that since the counties are unable to, under law, to deal with those assessments in a way that they would like to at the board, we had to step in and provide some regulation for them to apply in those instances. Our second approach here is we're creating, and it's in the wings right now, a standard administration guide for the county offices of Veterans Affairs and the county assessment offices. That's really a recitation of the regulations with a little more, of course, practical input and some discussion of situations like that that they can use to more justly answer those questions.

It certainly was one of the most important reasons why we decided to grapple with the regulations here and provide some consistency, because, again, current Chapter 5 provides the county offices of assessment in particular no good guidance at all on how to answer those questions. We do also realize that even with promulgating these regulations, the county boards of assessment appeal or revision of taxes, depending on the county, does have the ultimate authority under 51 PACS Section 8903 duty board to make these decisions. So even with the regulations in place, we've really tried to offer the flexibility and deference to those counties to manage the programs. Every county board sees issues differently. Folks who are denied the real estate tax exemption will bring an appeal to the county board just as you would an assessment appeal. And so the facts of those cases become really important at that stage. And you might see some difference between the way the boards, who are political machinery, right, in the county government, the way that they approach the real estate tax exemption. And I can give you one quick example. One quick example is the ownership requirements. So under statute, this real estate tax exemption is only made available to veterans who own their property solely, jointly with a spouse, or as an estate by the entirety. And there's a lot of property out there across Pennsylvania, especially with elderly veterans or aging veteran population, that's in trust. So trust, ownership by trust, becomes a large issue at the county assessment office. Are we allowed to make this applicant eligible or not? The way that we have guided, I suppose, the county assessment offices or the boards of assessment in these matters is to allow the board to hear the applicant and make a decision. So in one situation, there may just be a tax reason for someone putting their property in trust. But in another situation, and the example that I have at the top of my mind is a totally disabled female veteran who was a single mother of a severely disabled child. and she was advised by her counsel to put her property in trust for the benefit of that child if she were to pass. That trust, of course, would allow the property being in trust would allow the child, the minor child, to maintain her government benefits. Correct. So the board, and this was Allegheny County, and Allegheny County seems to be pretty forward-leaning in these matters, The board there granted her the exemption, even though her property was in trust, under the theory that she was still meeting the legislative intent by showing sufficient incidence of ownership over that property. It was a revocable trust. So you do find boards across the state who are making these hard decisions, and that's precisely why I believe the legislature gave the board, the county boards, those decisions. And that is certainly going to create some disparity from county to county. But those are the political decisions made in those counties.

We do throughout the Commonwealth. So, you know, I'll just go through some rough numbers for you because I think it's important that everybody understands the scope of our veteran population and what we look at here in Pennsylvania. So we have about 650,000 veterans. We're the seventh largest veteran population in the nation. That number has continued to dwindle. More than half of our veteran population is over the age of 65 at this point in time. From a compensation standpoint, our veterans bring in about $4.6 billion last year. This year we expect when the federal government releases the numbers at the end of their fiscal year in September, we're going to be over $5 billion in compensation here coming into the Commonwealth from the federal government, supporting the veterans of Pennsylvania. So when you look at those different breakouts by percentages, off the top of my head, roughly 34,000 Pennsylvanians are 100% disabled, roundabout in that number. The numbers are only really published once a year, so I hate using them, right, because they're dynamic and they move on us. but yeah we can give you a complete breakout of all the percentages as of October of last year when it was last published

you provide a definition of characterization of discharge every time we have some sort benefit program, there's typically a discussion in committee, who's going to be eligible? Honorable, general, OTH, what's going on here? In your rulemaking are there any programs that are impacted by this definition and are we expanding contracting in terms of the veterans who are in or out depending upon their characterization of service Right.

So the definition then here, the character of discharge, the overall characterization of veteran service determined upon release or discharge from active service in the armed force in the United States, did you basically just lift that from the federal definition?

Thank you.

So the people, when you say we, in your office, are you charged with that? So you encounter a veteran who's incarcerated and they are in this unique situation. Is there someone on your team managing that? Or do you pass that off to a caseworker in a different department? Like who's managing that due to the uniqueness of the situation?

So thank you for the clarification. My concern is that sometimes our thoughts and our hearts don't match up with the process to give access to these programs, and it's so cumbersome that people just say, fuck it, right? Like, and just, I'm not going to deal with it, right? It just too the barriers are so encumbered So one of the things that I been trying to work on not just with this particular with these programs but all the programs especially for folks that we catering them for, because generally the needs population, the, the need is so great and the challenges is so hard to, to go on to Compass, for example, and to fill out, you got to have a damn email. You got to have access to the internet. You got to have 20 minutes of patience. Then you got to gather all the documentation. Then you've got to remember your damn password from the time before. So there's so many layers. So to the extent that we can remove as many barriers as possible for folks, especially in this particular population, it's incredibly important. So you talk about the VSOs. Do you guys have someone that's accessible to the VSOs? So when they call, is someone answering? Or is there like a voicemail around a press 1, press 2, press 3? Are you

but there is a burden on them as well. Got it. Thank you. My last question is, you had mentioned that you guys provide the accreditation. Are all of our counties accredited at this point? Is there anyone that is not or lagging

Go ahead.

So all of them, as of this moment, have them?

Thank you. On a similar vein, in this committee it's often been discussed to arrive at a definition of the veteran. You guys have. how does that increase accessibility to certain programs or decrease accessibility to certain programs, if at all?

I would just add to that that the Department of Defense has a state legislative affairs office where they encourage states to – state legislators to address certain issues in the military community. and one of their leading issues in that program is correctly defining service members and veterans. So we leaned heavily into that definition provided by the state legislative office at DOD as well.

No. Like Keith said, the biggest limits that we have on providing support to veterans are in those tag-alongs like wartime service or service in an armed conflict, something like that. Otherwise, we broadly follow the VA's definition, and if the VA provides disability compensation to somebody, they have found at the federal level that that person meets the definition of veteran for the purpose of federal veterans' benefits, and so we drag that along into our state adjudications as well. The Korean Valor Act that was passed here last year is a good example of some of those veterans that are added through federal law into the veterans' definition in our state programs as well.

I would disagree with that. I did not mention that, but you're welcome.

It might be different program by program. So, for example, someone who doesn't have veteran status in the federal system is not going to receive disability compensation. So they're not patently not going to be eligible for a retex exemption, right? But one of the programs that this, you know, raises significant issues for us in is Veterans Temporary Assistance. That's our cash assistance program where we desperately want to help people who need desperate help, right? And the eligibility criteria in that program feed off the definition of veteran that we've codified here, that we're attempting to codify here, and it does not address National Guard members. So that would be a legislative change, and I'm not here to press legislative change, but you asked the question, and so an opportunity to serve those folks with reserve duty would be welcome on our end in the state veterans' programs.

Yes, I believe we should be, absolutely. I would say that one of the challenges is the rulemaking process itself. It's very difficult, very complex. You know that as well as any of us. We're not the Department of Human Services. We have a very small regulatory function as compared to other departments. And so our legal staff as well as our operational staff we struggle with this rulemaking efforts I started in 2019 and I saw this as an issue and we began rewriting this chapter in the PA code in 2021 So what we have done, and you'll see on the very last page of the regulatory analysis form required by IRC, is after these rules are promulgated, we're setting up a five-year review cycle.

Yeah. So, you know, resourcing in this area is greatly helpful. Right. No doubt about it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Two, to conclude, you talked about this five-year cycle to get this done. What's going to be the next chapter here? Where are you going to look next is number one. And two, how can this committee be helpful in the work that you do?

I would add, if I may, your question was where are we going from here, meaning are we going to have more changes? I think, like Keith mentioned, we feel like we've opened the aperture here as widely as possible within the box framework we've been given in statute, right? And so at this point, I don't know that we're able to necessarily expand or impact the state veterans' benefits any more beyond what we've done in this rulemaking, right? We feel like we've expanded ourselves entirely in that box. But what happens over time is benefits or our decisions are challenged in administrative appeals. They're challenged in court, and we have opportunities to then craft responses to case law like we did with the Vanderheft case or to incorporate different policy decisions into the regulatory mix. And that's more or less what we're going to be looking at in that five-year cycle.

Thank you. Thank you.