{"id":110115,"date":"2021-02-01T11:35:21","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T16:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=110115"},"modified":"2021-02-01T11:35:21","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T16:35:21","slug":"nprc-backlog-finally-getting-congressional-attention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=110115","title":{"rendered":"NPRC backlog finally getting Congressional attention"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The KoB sends us a story about a New Hampshire lady who was unable to get her veteran father’s records in time to bury him in a military cemetery. Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) has now demanded to know what the NPRC is doing with their half-million request backlog and why they haven’t (or how they have) used $50M ($50 million!<\/em>) in COVID stimulus money they’ve received from Congress.<\/p>\n

From the Union Leader<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Charlene Fyfe got stuck in a bureaucratic maze for more than a year, trying just to get a federal employee on the telephone as she searched for the military records of her father, Norman Levesque, 77.<\/p>\n

The Milford woman credits Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-NH, and staff with pulling the strings necessary to get those documents to Fyfe a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t come until after Levesque died Dec. 12 at a local nursing home, four days after he had gotten COVID-19.<\/p>\n

But hers is one of thousands of stories that cry out for reform of the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Mo. where 60 million paper records of veterans are stored.<\/p>\n

By the end of 2020, the backlog had grown to an estimated 445,000 requests for these records, according to Hassan.<\/p>\n

Levesque would have been eligible to be buried in the New Hampshire Veterans Center in Boscawen. Without the forms, Charlene\u2019s family paid out of pocket to bury Levesque in town.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat about somebody who did not have the funds to bury their loved one? That\u2019s the sad thing,\u201d Fyfe said during a telephone interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve got to do something about this system. Even with COVID, there\u2019s no excuse for being told over and over again, \u2018Well, there is no one answering the telephone.\u2019\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Hassan agreed. That\u2019s why last week she wrote a strong-worded letter to Director David Ferriero, seeking accountability, especially since the latest COVID-19 relief package contains $50 million in additional grants for this program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI urge you to quickly use this emergency funding provided by Congress to safely resume the processing of all military personnel records requests by veterans,\u201d wrote Hassan, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n

Hassan called on the director to explain by Feb. 22 why the program can\u2019t set up a remote call center, and when it will move to use the additional dollars to digitize all the older records.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have heard from numerous Granite State veterans about how these operational changes have led to delays in receiving the benefits they deserve and have earned,\u201d Hassan said in a statement. \u201cThese delays in benefits can cause potentially irreparable harm to veterans\u2019 health and financial well-being.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More at the source. We certainly feel their pain. Some of our requests are a part of that backlog, I’m sure.<\/p>\n

This is also a great lesson for all of us in making sure we let our loved ones know where to find our records. If you desire a burial in a national or state cemetery, get those docs lined up before something bad happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The KoB sends us a story about a New Hampshire lady who was unable to get … NPRC backlog finally getting Congressional attention<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,238,406],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work","category-government-incompetence","category-guest-link"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110121,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110115\/revisions\/110121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}