Morano questions Dalton on declining VA grant funding

Thank you, Commissioners.

And Commissioner Dalton, thank you especially for not only your testimony, but going out of your way to accommodate my colleagues and I in our visits to Borden Avenue and being patient with our questions and being receptive to resident feedback.

Let me begin with discussion of the VA grant since it's been such a hot topic and since you alluded to that in your testimony.

Your testimony says the VA offered the city $1.3 million to support 44 beds.

Compared with the previous $4 million supporting 154 beds, right?

So I understand that you had objections to the federal conditions.

Even if the city had to replace most of the funding with city dollars, wouldn't accepting $1.3 million still have reduced the burden on city taxpayers?

Did the administration explore accepting the federal funding for eligible beds while separately using city resources to ensure every other veteran continued receiving services?

Yeah, thank you for that question.

The challenge with the grants terms and conditions is that they would require us to be in violation of state and local laws.

And therefore, we could not sign that grant agreement and accept those dollars.

And therefore, we look for the city dollars to continue to serve every veteran that comes to our door.

So there was no way to...

Accept the grant money and then, say, challenge the provisions that we believe are in violation of city and state law in court or something along those lines?

It's a little bit out of my legal expertise.

However, my understanding is that the difference here is that this was a new grant agreement.

When we had grant agreements and changes had been made, we could amend those and note our objections and continue and proceed in court.

But with this being a new grant agreement, we'd be signing on to those conditions from the beginning and therefore could not do that without violating state and local laws.