THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE NATIONAL GUARD ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA

NATIONAL GUARD

ASSOCIATION OF

CALIFORNIA

FEBRUARY 2018/WWW.NGAC.ORG

All Eligible Veterans Should Be Applying for Veterans Benefits through the VA!

I t has come to my attention over the years that a number of eligible veterans had not applied, and even worse, had no intention of applying for veterans benefits through the VA or other govern-ment programs. I recently spoke to another veteran who indicated no interest in applying for VA benefits for injuries incurred in the service because of the “bureaucracy” and the belief that the

system was set up to primarily deny applications and that any efforts made to obtain benefits would be a complete waste of time. There certainly is perception about this that still lingers. For example, the 1992 movie Article 99 was about the troubles at a VA hospital (starring Kiefer Sutherland, Ray Liotta and For-est Whitaker) and identified similar sentiments, many of which remain today among some older veter-ans. If you have never heard of this movie, you can view the trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyqsyb_0y0o

Unfortunately, some of the legitimate problems identified with the VA over the years have still not been fully resolved. The below links are but a few examples:

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/10/01/veterans-denied-millions-in-benefits-by-va.html and https://www.aikenstandard.com/opinion/letter-fight-for-your-veterans-benefits/article_536980d2-fd7c-11e7-8f61-17def82c528c.html and http://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/374542-the-real-va-scandal-no-will-to-help-veterans

Well, I can certainly understand the frustration with the federal bureaucracy, but I cannot agree that this is reason enough for a veteran to fail to apply for benefits that are clearly earned and well deserved.

Of course, veterans are perfectly within their rights to “not apply” for any benefits, if they so choose. But is that a good thing? For starters, if every veteran took this approach, the VA would close completely before long, and Congress would happily spend the money elsewhere. Veterans of the future would get the same thing that veterans in the past used to get: absolutely nothing. That sounds like a complete disaster to me. However, I

am optimistic that an unwillingness by veterans to apply for their earned benefits is being expressed by only a very, very small percentage of those eligible.

If you are an eligible veteran, you should apply for your benefits. It may prove beneficial to do some basic research first, as you may be eligible for more than you know. Consider reviewing the following links and investigating more when you have time:

https://taskandpurpose.com/mental-health-services-va/ https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2017-08-16/5-things-for-veterans-to-know-about-expanded-gi-bill-benefits http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-201711211914--tms--savingsgctnzy-a20171121-20171121-story.html

Our next newsletter will identify assistance available to you for completing your initial VA application.

Good luck with your research and thanks for your service!

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGETHE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE NATIONAL GUARD ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA

John Haramalis

NGAC President

WWW.NGAC.ORG FEBRUARY 2018, NATIONAL GUARD ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA 2

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE

Call for Nominations

T he association is now en-

couraging members to nomi-

nate candidates for office.

The nomination period for

the 2019-2020 term of office will be June

1, 2018 to July 30, 2018. Active or Life

member who dues are current may nom-

inate and or hold office. Please complete

the Nomination for Office form, and mail

or email the nomination to the address

or email address below.

If you want to nominate more than one

person, please submit a separate email

for each nominee. Upon receipt, the

Elections Committee will contact each

nominee to ascertain whether they wish

to have their name placed on the ballot.

Association offices available for nomina-

tion are President, First Vice-President,

Second Vice-President, Secretary, Treas-

urer, and seven additional at-large Execu-

tive Council Members.

2018 NGAC ELECTION SCHEDULE

·Nomination Period 01 June 2018 thru 30July 2018.·(Only current NGAC Members may nom-inate and or run for an Executive Councilposition)·Candidate statement and picture due toNGAC NLTSeptember 20. 2018.

·Ballots to be printed and mailed Septem-ber 30, 2018·Members Cast Ballots – October 2, 2016untilDecember 31 2018·(Proxies are not allowed)·Ballots to be counted in the first twoweeks of January 2018·New Executive Council takes office NLTJanuary 31, 2018

MAILING ADDRESS:

NGAC Attn: Elections Committee – Nomination for Office 3336 Bradshaw Road, Suite 230 Sacramento, CA 95827-2615

EMAIL ADDRESS: ed@ngac.org

2018 NOMINATION FOR NGAC EXECUTIVE COUNCIL

NOMINATOR'S INFORMATION

Last Name First Name MI NGAC Member Year

Street Address City State Zip Code

Primary Telephone #

Alternate Telephone #

Email Address

NOMINEE'S INFORMATION

Last Name First Name MI NGAC Member Year

Primary Telephone #

Alternate Telephone #

Email Address

By Jim Lubey

WWW.NGAC.ORG FEBRUARY 2018, NATIONAL GUARD ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA 3

BASE LOS ALAMITOS CALIFORNIA

Photo (on the right) by Senior Airman Crystal Housman |

California State Military Reserve (CSMR) Staff Sgt. James

Fitzgerald, of the Installation Support Command, wears the

CSMR patch on his left sleeve while working an overnight

shift at the Joint Forces Training Base Los Alamitos, Califor-

nia, gate Dec. 11, 2017. State military reservists are soldiers

who serve in a mostly-volunteer status and can be activated

to assist their National Guard counterparts in California dur-

ing disasters and other emergencies.

WWW.NGAC.ORG FEBRUARY 2018, NATIONAL GUARD ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA 4

SoCal Fires: State Military Reservists Answer the Call

When the bell sounded in

early December for

the California National Guard to activate in support of fire relief efforts in Southern California, the California State Military Reserve’s Installation Support Command (ISC) answered the call.

Two dozen soldiers from the ISC at Joint Forces Training Base, Los Alamitos, stood up on emergency state active duty to help the base as it transformed into a staging area for personnel and supplies heading into communities ravaged by fire.

State military reservists serve in a mostly-volunteer status and can be activated to assist their National Guard counterparts in California during disasters and other emer-gencies.

“The mission of the ISC is to support the base,” said Col. (CA) Richard Lalor, ISC commander.

Twelve wildfires ignited throughout the region in a four-day span forcing thou-sands to evacuate their homes. The largest of the blazes, the Thomas Fire, started Dec. 4 and continues to burn in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. The fire is over 280,000 acres and is the largest recorded wildfire in California’s modern history.

As residents in six counties fled their homes to seek shelter from the firestorm, the base became a launch pad for the Cal Guard and agency partners including the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) and the Federal Emergency Man-agement Agency.

With 24-hour operations underway and trucks of soldiers and supplies going in and out of the installation, the base needed to increase its manpower to support the re-sponse tempo and volume of activity.

ISC soldiers provided extra manning for the

installation’s gates, conducted traffic con-trol points, and secured and patrolled the Cal OES staging area for multiagency per-sonnel and supplies, in concert with the base’s Training Support Detachment (TSD). The ISC also provided a night duty officer for the base and activated an operations officer to coordinate the unit’s activation and responsibilities.

The first soldiers were activated on less than twelve hours notice, Lalor said.

“It was drop what you’re doing, tell your boss you’ve been activated for an emergen-cy, and be here,” Lalor said. “And they were here.”

Spc. (CA) Juan Ossa was one of the first to be activated. When the call came, he knew

he had to take it.

“When the last fires came through, we had our go-bags in the car and thought ‘Well, maybe…,’ but nothing ever happened,” Ossa said. “When this started happening and the calls started coming in, we thought, ‘This is real.’”

Ossa, who serves in security forces, said he and his counterparts were prepared for the added responsibility a natural disaster would bring to the base.

“We train for this,” he said. “We were all comfortable with it. We knew what we needed to do.”

For the past year, the ISC has worked to align itself with its National Guard counter-parts for scenarios just like this, Lalor said. Earlier in the fall, their skills were validated during the the base’s Joint Reception Stag-ing Onward Integration exercise.

The exercise tested the base’s ability to receive, sustain, stage and push out thou-sands of first responders and supplies in response to a natural disaster. The exercise disaster was a tsunami triggered by an earthquake, but at a tactical level, staging for the actual wildfire response was no different, Ossa said.

“Everything we had to do today was stuff that we practiced a month ago with every-body here at the base,” Ossa said. “Because of that and because of how we fell in along

with our base security counterparts it just fell into place.”

The wildfire response was Ossa’s first ma-jor disaster activation during his service as a state military reservist.

It was the second disaster activation for Staff Sgt. (CA) James Fitzgerald, who serves in the ISC as an electrician, but is trained and authorized to augment securi-ty forces as needed. He worked with Ossa

on an overnight shift at base’s front gate.

“This is what we’re trained for, this is what we know, and we’re glad to do it,” Fitzger-ald said. “It’s giving something back as far as I’m concerned.”

During the fire response, ISC and TSD sol-diers maintained traffic control and security at a Cal OES staging area on the base 24 hours a day. As the staging area grew in size and moved, the soldiers did, too.

Their efforts made it easier for agency partners to focus on the mission.

...continue on the next page...

SUBMITTED BY SENIOR AIRMAN CRYSTA L HOUSMAN

WWW.NGAC.ORG FEBRUARY 2018, NATIONAL GUARD ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA 5

T he Governor released his pro-posed budget today. This is the first step in the yearly state budg-et process. The Governor pre-

sents his version of the budget to the Leg-islature which reflects the priorities of the Governor and the needs of the state agen-cies and departments who work for him.

This version of the budget will be taken by the Senate and the Assembly and each house will hold hearings, take public com-ment, deliberate, and make changes to the Governor’s budget. When that pro-cess is done, the Senate and Assembly will compare their two versions of the budget and convene a Conference Committee to compare the differences and vote them into one unified budget. Both houses will then vote on it. Once that is done, the Legislature sends that version of the budg-et back to the Governor for his approv-al. The Governor can’t add items back into this budget, but he can “blue pencil” or remove or reduce budget allocations. The deadline for the Governor to sign the Budget is June 15.

Items pertaining to veterans in the Gover-

nor’s budget:

Includes $50 million to provide credits for businesses that hire individuals who have employment barriers in the workforce, such as parolees, CalWORKs recipients, and veterans.

Continuing progress on civil service reform over the years, the Governor is continuing to systemically improve the civil service system by increasing recruitment of un-derrepresented communities, veterans, and persons with disabilities.

The Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2018 proposes a $4 billion bond on the November 2018 ballot. The first $3 billion of the bond will support various existing housing programs. The remaining $1 billion will be available to support home ownership for veterans, with down payment assistance, reduced fees and closing costs, and competitive interest rates.

The Department of Veterans Affairs oper-ates eight veterans homes and three state veterans cemeteries. The Budget includes $15.7 million General Fund for the prelimi-nary plans phase of a new Skilled Nursing Facility at the Veterans Home of California,

Yountville. The project represents CalVet’s top priority—to address the changing na-ture of long-term care with a particular emphasis on providing skilled nursing and memory care services in a non-institutional, homelike environment. The Budget also includes $571,000 from the California Central Coast State Veterans' Cemetery at Fort Ord Operations Fund for the working drawings phase for the con-tinuation of the California Central Coast Veterans Cemetery project.

The Governor’s budget also maintains the current funding of $5.6 million in Local Assistance funding for County Veterans Service Officers.

Funding is included to begin a fully devel-oped effort to fund claims representatives in the state prisons to assist incarcerated veterans.

We will continue to keep you apprised of the progress of the budget process. Re-member that the Legislature can change what is in the Governor’s budget, so we must be vigilant and be prepared to fight for the funding issues important to us.

Dana Nichol

“I’ve had security before, but I’ve never had security as good as this security,” said Mark Ackerman of Cal OES, who led the agency’s staging area.

“They were always patrolling. These guys were documenting our activities and were involved in the process,” Ackerman said. “They’re protecting us, but they’re also protecting the assets – without even being told.”

The assets included pallets of water, food,

emergency supplies, and equipment. “I leave here at night, and I’m not worried about it,” Ackerman said. “Maybe a rabbit would get into our MREs (meals, ready to eat), but that’s about it.”

Lalor takes pride in seeing his soldiers an-swer the call.

“Whatever the mission was or the job was, they jumped right at it,” Lalor said. “It was a pleasure, watching them in action and see-ing how they responded to the emergency. They were just absolutely outstanding.”

In the coming months, Lalor will present each of his activated soldiers with the California State Service Ribbon. He’s looking forward to it.

“It’s going to be an honor for me,” Lalor said. “It’s a big deal because that little rib-bon says this man or woman stood up when the call came to serve their neighbors, to serve their community, and to serve their state in its hour of need. That’s important.” https://www.dvidshub.net/news/260614/socal-fires-state-military-reservists-answer-call

Governor's Budget Released

Overview of Vets Issues

CALIFORNIA CAPITOL NEWS

WWW.NGAC.ORG FEBRUARY 2018, NATIONAL GUARD ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA 6

HOW TO STAY SAFE WHILE DRIVING IN COLDER CONDITIONS

P rint out this cooler-weather checklist and

stash in your glove box to get your car ready for the days ahead.

Every Trip Before starting up the

car, check around your vehicle for obstructions,

including ones that might hide in snow-banks.

Adjust the position of all mirrors and the driver’s seat, particularly if any-one else uses the vehi-cle.

Don’t worry about “warming up” your car. Idling wastes fuel, and automakers rarely rec-ommend it. Instead, run the engine for 30 sec-onds, then drive gently for the first five to 10 minutes so you become

aware of road condi-tions.

If necessary, clean grime, snow and frost from win-dows and outside mir-rors. Even a slight film on windows can create blinding glare.

Carry an emergency kit in the trunk. Pack paper towels for clearing win-dows, a snowbrush or scraper, a small shovel, jumper cables, a flash-light, a blanket and a bag of kitty litter or sand for traction.

Weekly, Or as Needed Pop the hood and

look for cracks or signs of extreme wear in belts and hoses.

Clean your headlights and taillights. Ask some-one to help you check them; replace any that are burned out.

Keep your gas tank at least half filled to pre-vent your gas line from freezing.

Top off your windshield washer fluid with a prod-uct that deters snow and ice buildup.

Check tire pressure at least at every other fill-up. Don’t eyeball it; use a tire gauge. Test your battery by switching your

headlights on before you start your car. If they dim significantly after you turn the key, have your battery checked.

Each time you fill up, calculate your miles per gallon. If you see a dra-matic decline, take your vehicle in for mainte-nance.

Monthly Inspect your tires. Ade-

quate tread depth is critical to safe handling. If you find less than 1/16 inch of tread, re-place the tire.

Check for cracked or smearing windshield wipers and replace them if necessary. If your re-gion gets a lot of snow and ice, consider special winter blades.

Pick a warmer day to get your car washed. You’ll improve your visibility and rinse off corrosion-causing salt.

References:

https://

www.metlifeyourlife.co

m/auto-safety/prepare

-your-car-for-cool-

weather/#.Wk-

XUrdKuUk

Cooler Weather Prepare Your Car for

National Guard Association of California 3336 Bradshaw Road Suite 230 Sacramento, CA 95827

About the SSLI Program

The State Sponsored Life Insurance (SSLI) program provides group term life insurance exclusively for actively serving members of the Army and Air National Guard organizations and their depend-ents. The program is derived from United States Public Law 93-289, May 24, 1974, to encourage persons to join and remain in the National Guard.

Armed Forces Benefit Association (AFBA) is a main provider for Basic and Enhanced SSLI cover-age through 5Star Life Insurance Company. AFBA was established in 1947 with the support of the Chief of Staff and General of the Army, Dwight D. Eisenhower, to promote the general welfare and economic interest of uniformed military service members and their families during peace and war.

As the proud provider of one of the most comprehensive SSLI programs in the country, AFBA has more than 140,000 National Guard members, retirees, and family members with $14B of insurance in force and has paid out more than $79M in claims. We provide high value life insurance protection with no military specialty or combat or war exclusions to our National Guard members and their fam-ilies.

Toll Free Customer Service

800-462-7441