Things look dire upon an initial glance at the Rhode Island Office of Veterans Services’ fiscal year 2027 budget request.
The office suggests that to meet what the state calls a “constrained” budget scenario — a 7.5% spending cut across state agencies — it would need to cut 32 contracted jobs. That, in turn, would eliminate 32 beds at the Rhode Island Veterans Home in Bristol, and lead to an even longer waiting list for veterans who often wait 16 to 18 months for admission.
But state budget documents are not the most intuitive reading material, and Veterans Services offered more than one possibility for the upcoming fiscal year. The state’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requires all state agencies to offer two funding scenarios in their annual requests for state money: One is the amount needed to sustain current operations, and the other is the stricter 7.5% cut.
The state budget office discouraged agencies from sending in “unconstrained” proposals — essentially an agency wishlist — or “expansionary proposals,” in the words of spokesperson Derek Gomes, because of the projected deficit heading into fiscal 2027.
Current projections for fiscal year 2027, which begins on July 1, 2026, forecast a $304.3 million deficit.
That deficit is “within reason for the last few years,” Gomes said. Still, it’s nearly $42 million higher than the deficit for the current fiscal year and more than double the deficit for fiscal year 2025.
‘Off the table’
“The governor’s not going to shut down another wing; that’s off the table,” Laura Hart, a spokesperson for the governor, told Rhode Island Current in a recent phone call. “It’s a no-go.”
The 208-bed facility housed 141 residents — mostly men over the age of 75 who served in Vietnam, Korea and World War II — at the time of the Oct. 1 budget request by the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the veterans office.
Parker Gavigan, spokesperson for the veterans services office, said the immediate goal is to increase the number of residents at the home to its 160 maximum within several weeks, “while ensuring every veteran receives the highest standard of care.”
As of Friday, Oct. 24, Gavigan said the home had 144 residents in beds that include skilled nursing care. Another three residents live in the home’s domicile unit, more comparable to assisted living. Ten veterans are expected to be admitted around Nov. 1, Gavigan said.
There were 211 veterans on the home’s waiting list, when the budget request was submitted on Oct. 1. As of Friday, Oct. 24, it had increased to 214.
“From that list, three are cleared and ready for admission,” Gavigan said.
The governor must submit a balanced budget to the General Assembly in January, where it will then spend the subsequent months getting hammered into its final shape by legislators by the end of June, right before the new fiscal year begins on July 1.
“Ultimately, not all of those recommendations or proposals will be accepted by the governor’s office,” Gomes said. “So that’s kind of where the discretion is.”
For instance, this is the second consecutive year the Veterans Services office proposed closing a neighborhood at the veterans home to meet the constrained budget framework. The office’s fiscal 2026 request, filed in fall 2024, is recapped in the enacted budget summary by the House Fiscal Advisory Staff.
This option would have “shut down the home’s Alpha-1 neighborhood” and the Veterans Services office “would have to cease admissions, wait for ten current residents to expire, and move five people to open rooms in the Bravo and Charlie neighborhoods.”
Neither McKee nor the General Assembly humored that suggestion. Neither party endorsed Veterans’ Services’ other ask last year either, for four new positions — three “cemetery specialists” and one customer service role — at the Rhode Island Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Exeter. The office anticipated more burials under the federal Burial Equity for Guards and Reserves Act.
The veterans services office ultimately received $3 million more in the current fiscal year than it asked for, with its funding at just under $53 million in the enacted budget.
What would happen if …
When budget request season arrives each fall, state agencies still have to hypothesize what would happen if they performed under their current benchmark.
“For some smaller agencies, where most of, if not the vast majority of, their costs are tied to personnel, it’s harder to achieve a 7.5% reduction,” Gomes, said. “But to comply with the spirit of the request, the agencies comply.”
Some do not comply. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha refused to submit a constrained proposal this year, noting that the only way to achieve the mandated 7.5% spending cut would eliminate positions “critical to the mission of the Office.”
“Such cuts would severely undermine public safety, and significantly hamper our ability to defend the State and fight on behalf of Rhode Islanders,” Neronha wrote in his Oct. 1 budget submission. “Accordingly, I cannot responsibly put forth such a budget proposal.”
The veterans services office, in complying with the request, noted its worst case scenario — the closure of 32 beds — would generate an estimated $1.65 million of savings in general revenue savings and a total of $2.73 million in savings across all funding sources.
These savings “would come at a significant operational and human cost,” Veterans Services Director Kasim J. Yarn wrote in his cover letter to his office’s fiscal year 2027 budget request.
“Implementing this cut would close an entire 32-bed neighborhood, directly reducing the Home’s capacity to serve aging veterans,” Yarn wrote in his Oct. 1 letter. “This would lead to a decrease in resident population, a loss of per diem and maintenance fee revenue, and a diminished ability to admit new veterans — ultimately undermining our mission to provide timely, high-quality care to those who served.”
The agency recommendation at the top of the proposal states outright that this is not the path the office wants to pursue: “If asked to make budgetary cuts, there will be severe consequences to vital services at our Veterans Home — a scenario we hope to avoid,” the document reads.
There were 211 veterans on the home’s waiting list, when the budget request was submitted on Oct. 1. Cutting the 32 positions — all directly involved in patient care — would close an unidentified 32-bed wing at the home. That in turn would “dramatically increase the waiting list timeframe” and “the admittance of new residents will cease for months,” according to the budget document.
The constrained proposal would allow for replacement hires of current full-timers should they leave but would otherwise freeze hiring for 23 full-time certified nursing assistant positions.
Yarn noted in his cover letter that the Veterans Home already has a shortage of certified nursing assistants and, in a more ideal spending environment, the office recommends that the state raise their pay.
In its wishlist — or unconstrained — budget request, Yarn’s office asked for $51.2 million. That includes raising certified nursing assistant pay scales at a projected cost of $425,951. Doing so, Yarn said, would help the veterans home move away from contracted agency labor, which now accounts about 50% of its patient care workforce, and would produce savings in subsequent years. The extra money would also buy “an advanced fall detection system” to mitigate resident falls at the home — a major issue, Yarn wrote, with about 32 occurring every month.
Even if the wing closure will likely not happen, other constrained proposals may succeed. Yarn’s office also floated the idea of ending Saturday burials at Exeter’s Rhode Island Veterans Memorial Cemetery, estimated to save about $30,000 in overtime costs. Rhode Island and Connecticut are the only New England states which offer Saturday burials. In the past few years, the budget document notes, Rhode Island has averaged about $35,000 annually in overtime costs related to Saturday burials.
Another possibility is charging a “modest” burial fee of $978 per plot for veterans’ eligible spouses and dependents to be buried at the Veterans Cemetery. Twenty-six of the 41 U.S. states with veterans cemeteries charge interment fees for non-veteran family members, the office said, but Rhode Island does not. This change could yield an estimated $503,670 in annual revenue, based on the 515 veterans’ family members, including spouses and dependents, who were interred at the cemetery on average per year over the last six years.
The governor’s office will review the proposals over the ensuing months, and McKee will submit his initial draft of the budget to the General Assembly in January.
House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi and Senate President Valarie Lawson offered a joint statement last week on the veterans’ office’s budget request for fiscal year 2027.
“Our respective Finance committees will carefully review all agency budget requests next session, including any proposals the Governor recommends in his budget,” Shekarchi and Lawson wrote. “Veterans’ services remain a priority for the General Assembly, and we will continue working to balance limited taxpayer resources with many areas of need.”
Senior Reporter Nancy Lavin contributed to this story.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
