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Poteau Daily News

Fallin signs bill to close vet center

By Amanda Corbin
PDN Reporter
Gov. Mary Fallin this week
signed House Bill 3042, which
allows the eventual closure of
the Talihina Veterans Center af-
ter a new center is built.
The bill creates the Oklahoma The VA would also be au- The bill states operations at
Veterans Facility Investment Act Related thorized to refurbish existing Talihina would continue until
of 2018, which authorizes the See Letter to the Editor facilities on property owned by being transferred to a new facil-
state Veterans Affairs to con- on Page 4 the state or property purchased ity.
struct certain facilities “to as- or donated from other sources, Relocation regulations de-
sume operation of the Oklahoma location and site of a new facility citing private owners or govern- mand that if moved, the center
Veterans Center established in will be determined by the Okla- mental or municipal entities, and
Talihina,” the bill text reads. The homa Veterans Commission. issue bonds up to $35 million. (See VETERANS, page 2)

Property of OPS News Tracker and members of the Oklahoma Press Association.
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Poteau Daily News
VETERANS
must be built within 90 miles of
the current Talihina facility.
In the House, area Reps. Ed
Cannaday, D-Porum, and Brian
Renegar, D-McAlester, voted
against it. Rep Rick West, R-
Heavener, voted for the bill. In
the Senate, Sen. Mark Allen,
R-Spiro, voted for the bill, as
well as did area Sens. Larry
Boggs, R-Wilburton, and Jo-
seph Silk, R-Broken Bow. In
the House, voting was 57 yes,
33 no, with 57 Republicans
voting for it and 10 Republi-
cans against. In the Senate, the
vote was 31 yes, 11 no, with 21
Republicans voting for it and
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No Democrats voted in favor
of the closure in either the House
or Senate.
In March, West voiced in his
weekly column the reasoning
behind his vote.
“With only 99 beds occupied
at the center, we are at risk of
losing all 175 beds that we have
in southeast Oklahoma. My ‘yes’
vote to relocate it was not an ef-
fort to shut the center down but
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RAPTORS
Property of OPS News Tracker and members of the Oklahoma Press Association.
more years in hopes of another
center being built,” West said.
“We must keep these 175 beds
for our veterans. My vote was to
provide the best for these dedi-
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so much for our country.”
Chairman Jerry Pearce of the
Save the Talihina Veterans Cen-
ter Committee said the commit-
tee is holding out hope “that a
new governor and Legislature in
a few months will put an end to
this madness. What our veterans
need are more doctors, nurses,
labs, EKG machines and phar-
macists, which will provide a
higher quality of care, rather than
a new building.” See Pearce’s
full response to the passage on
today’s Page 4.
Drew Edmondson, gubernato-
rial candidate and Vietnam vet-
eran, said in a letter to state VA
Executive Director Doug Elliot
that if he is elected governor, he
would work to reopen the center
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will look for funding would be
the salaries of those responsible
for its closure.”
In the past, the state Veterans
Affairs’ reasoning to relocate
the center have included its age
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Two resident deaths at the fa-
cility also helped fuel the effort
after one veteran who died had
maggots in a wound, although
it was not the cause of death,
and a second died from chok-
ing. The center is located on the
grounds of a former tuberculo-
sis sanatorium which opened in
the 1920s and was transferred
to the War Veterans Commis-
sion in the 1970s to become a
veterans center.