Legal Services for Veterans-Legal Assistance for Access to VA Programs Grant Program

DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS <CFR>38 CFR Part 81</CFR> <RIN>RIN 2900-AS17</RIN> <SUBJECT>Legal Services for Veterans—Legal Assistance for Access to VA Programs Grant Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Department of Veterans Affairs. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) proposes to amend its regulations to implement a new authority requiring VA to establish a pilot program to assess the feasibility of awarding grants to eligible entities to establish new legal assistance clinics or enhance existing legal assistance clinics and pro bono efforts to provide certain legal assistance to veterans and individuals who served in the Armed Forces. This rulemaking provides proposed grant program eligibility criteria, application requirements, scoring criteria, constraints on the allocation and use of grant funds, and other requirements necessary to implement the grant program. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before December 2, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments may be submitted through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Except as provided below, comments received before the close of the comment period will be available at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> for public viewing, inspection, or copying, including any personally identifiable or confidential business information that is included in a comment. We post the comments received before the close of the comment period on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> as soon as possible after they have been received <E T="03">.</E> VA will not post on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> public comments that make threats to individuals or institutions or suggest that the commenter will take actions to harm an individual. VA encourages individuals not to submit duplicative comments; however, we will post comments from multiple unique commenters even if the content is identical or nearly identical to other comments. Any public comment received after the comment period's closing date is considered late and will not be considered in the final rulemaking. In accordance with the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act of 2023, a 100 word Plain-Language Summary of this proposed rule is available at <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> , under RIN 2900-AS17. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Madolyn Gingell, National Coordinator, Legal Services for Veterans, Veterans Justice Programs, Clinical Services, Veterans Health Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, at <E T="03">Madolyn.Gingell@va.gov</E> or (239) 223-4681. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On January 1, 2021, the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, Public Law 116-283 (the Act), was signed into law and authorized appropriations for defense activities and various other purposes. Section 548(b) of the Act directed the Secretary of VA (Secretary) to establish a pilot program to assess the feasibility and advisability of awarding grants to eligible entities to establish new legal assistance clinics or enhance existing legal assistance clinics or other pro bono efforts in locations other than VA facilities to provide certain legal assistance to veterans and individuals who served in the Armed Forces. VA proposes to implement this pilot program by creating the Legal Services for Veterans—Legal Assistance for Access to VA Programs Grant Program (Grant Program) in new part 81 of title 38, Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The primary purpose of the Grant Program is to provide certain legal assistance to former service members to assist them in gaining access to VA benefits. Because a former service member's discharge is often a barrier to VA benefits, VA believes the Grant Program would provide needed assistance with improving the character of discharge for those individuals whose current discharge status renders them ineligible for VA benefits. Attorneys are well-suited to help individuals navigate these processes, and the proposed Grant Program would directly fund the provision of legal assistance with any VA program, with improving the status of a military discharge or characterization of service, and with seeking a review of a military record before a board of correction of military or naval records, consistent with Section 548(b) of the Act. The Grant Program would serve a broad group of individuals, not just those who meet the statutory definition of veteran under 38 U.S.C. 101(2), and would also assist any individual discharged or released from the Armed Forces, including those who served in a reserve component. To be eligible for VA programs and services, an individual's military discharge or release must generally be under “other than dishonorable conditions” ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> honorable, under honorable conditions, general), a standard established in the statutory definition of veteran under 38 U.S.C. 101(2). A military discharge or release under certain conditions, regardless of the character of service listed on an individual's Certificate of Uniformed Service (DD Form 214/5), could also constitute a statutory bar to VA programs and services under 38 U.S.C. 5303. However, in certain circumstances, individuals that do not meet the statutory definition under 38 U.S.C. 101(2) could qualify for VA programs and services if they receive a favorable outcome through a military service discharge review board, a board for correction of military or naval records, or VA's character of discharge determination. In late September 2021, VA sought input from 18 veterans service organizations and legal services organizations to inform development of the criteria and requirements for implementation of the Grant Program. VA asked the organizations to provide comments on: (1) the types of VA programs to be focused on; (2) any additional assistance that should be provided beyond what is specified in the Act; (3) criteria that should be emphasized during the grant selection process; (4) how VA should require grantees to target individuals eligible to receive legal assistance without regard for the conditions of discharge or release from the Armed Forces; (5) criteria that should be used to assess the effectiveness of the Grant Program; (6) and any additional factors VA should consider for the Grant Program. VA received input from two veterans service organizations and three legal services organizations. Multiple commenters stated the Grant Program should prioritize approving grant applicants that: operate in underserved areas; would provide legal assistance to improve the status of a military discharge or characterization of service; and would provide legal assistance to those who are ineligible for VA health care. Almost all commenters suggested VA prioritize approving grant applicants that have experience providing legal assistance to veterans instead of prioritizing grant applicants who would expand their current program to newly provide legal assistance to veterans or grant applicants who would start an entirely new legal assistance program. In addition, commenters suggested VA prioritize grant applicants that engage in community outreach to former service members, considering both the direct outreach of the applicant as well as the applicant's relationships with community partners serving these individuals. Additionally, some commenters suggested that VA allow grantees to provide a broad range of legal assistance beyond what is specified in the Act. These comments were considered during development of the proposed Grant Program criteria and requirements, and the feedback VA received is publicly available at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> as “Supporting & Related Material” to this rulemaking. <HD SOURCE="HD1">38 CFR Part 81—Legal Services for Veterans—Legal Assistance for Access to VA Programs Grant Program</HD> The Legal Services for Veterans—Legal Assistance for Access to VA Programs Grant Program (Grant Program) would be established in new part 81 of title 38, CFR, to provide clarity and establish criteria for applicants and grantees who may participate in the Grant Program. These new regulations would ensure consistency in the overall administration of the Grant Program and would provide transparency to eligible entities applying for and administering a legal assistance grant. The purpose, scope, and definitions applicable to the Grant Program would be established in proposed §§ 81.0 and 81.5. Eligibility for entities seeking a legal assistance grant would be established in proposed § 81.10. Eligible individuals seeking legal assistance from a grantee would be established in proposed § 81.15. The types of legal assistance that could be provided to eligible individuals under the Grant Program would be established in proposed § 81.20. Grant Program application, scoring, and selection criteria for new grantees and renewals would be established in proposed §§ 81.25 through 81.50. Grantee requirements would be established in proposed §§ 81.55 through 81.115. The proposed content and structure of new part 81 are described in further detail below. <HD SOURCE="HD2">§ 81.0 Purpose and Scope</HD> Proposed 38 CFR 81.0 would explain the purpose and scope of part 81. Proposed paragraph (a) would state that the purpose is to implement the Legal Services for Veterans—Legal Assistance for Access to VA Programs Grant Program to award grants to eligible entities to establish new legal assistance clinics or enhance existing legal assistance clinics or other pro bono efforts providing legal assistance to eligible individuals. Proposed paragraph (b) would state that part 81 applies only to the provision of legal assistance in locations ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 145k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━