Military Family Relief Fund Goes Untapped

A year after it was launched to help activated National Guard families suffering financial hardships, the California Military Family Relief Fund has been a major disappointment to its sponsors.

In 2005, the fund paid out only $7,687 to just three families from among the 7,000 soldiers activated for federal duty in Iraq, Afghanistan and other postings that year.

The emergency fund was designed to help National Guard families facing unexpected bills, such as food, housing, child care, utilities, medical services and insurance.

In comparison, a similar fund in Illinois but which also includes military reservists called up for duty paid $1.1 million to 2,682 families in its first year of operation. At least half of those who were helped, said Illinois program director Eric Schuller, were members of the Illinois National Guard.

Disturbed by the California relief program’s performance, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the fund’s initial sponsor and primary advocate, wrote a Jan. 2 letter to National Guard Maj. Gen. William H. Wade, requesting an explanation.

“To find that a year later that we have served only a few people is very disappointing. It’s shameful,” Bustamante said in an interview. “The program is not being used. It’s not being publicized.”

Bustamante blamed the National Guard for not developing awareness of the program, which grants up to $2,000 emergency relief to needy military families.

Col. Lawrence Cooper, the National Guard’s director of personnel and human resources, defended the guard’s outreach efforts and said that the program, which requires proof of a 30% loss of income between the soldier’s civilian and military income, was too restrictive as it is now written.

“As of yesterday,” Cooper said in a telephone interview Friday, “we had 18 applications and were able to grant only three.” One of the families was so needy, Cooper said, that the guard decided to exceed the $2,000 limit, which he said explains the $7,687 dispersed to just three families.

California has been more successful helping families through the privately funded Chaplains’ Relief Fund, which in the last 14 months has distributed $65,000 to 80 needy soldiers, Cooper said.

To fix the Family Relief Fund, Cooper urges going back to the Legislature to reduce or eliminate the conditions so that relief can be issued solely on need, not mathematical formulas. “Readjust the standards and we can help a lot more families,” Cooper said.

“We need to take a look at this and see what can be refined to meet the intent of this legislation,” said state Sen. Mike Machado (D-Linden), author of the bill creating the fund. “Fundamentally, we need to make sure that the men and women who are of service to this country receive the benefits.”

Assemblywoman Nicole Parra (D-Hanford), who carried the military family relief bill in the lower house, called the fund’s record “inexcusable” and vowed, like Machado, to “correct this problem legislatively.”

No one disputes that the need is there. A 2004 Department of Defense survey of married National Guard members and reservists showed that 55% of those interviewed experienced significant loss of income going from their civilian career to military service. For 15% of those surveyed, the loss was more than $30,000 a year.

“Some families have lost as much as 70% of their household incomes while their primary wage earner is serving our country,” Bustamante said in September 2004, when he celebrated the signing of the California Military Family Relief Act. “That can mean house and tuition payments aren’t being made, savings are drained, retirement accounts are depleted and cars are repossessed -- all because a loved one is in harm’s way in the service of our country.”

The bill passed unanimously in the Assembly and by a 75-1 vote in the Senate.

The California plan, as well as those in other states, was modeled on the Illinois prototype.

With the nation’s first and most successful program of its type, Illinois has the same 30% loss of income condition in its emergency grant program.

In addition to the family relief benefits, however, the Illinois fund also offers $500 grants to all National Guard and reserve families activated for federal duty regardless of need. It grants $3,000 for those wounded in the line of duty. California offers neither of these.

In another program that covers all soldiers -- regular, guard and reserves -- Illinois pays $272,000 line-of-duty death benefits to every soldier killed in action or in training for a combat assignment.

So when Moline, Ill., Marine reservist Sgt. Matthew Adams, 26, died in a Humvee accident at San Diego’s Miramar Naval Air Base on July 24, 2004, his family received the death benefit. So far, Illinois has paid out $20 million in the program.

Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a $10,000 death benefit for California National Guard members and reservists killed in action. So far the state has paid out $300,000.

Yet another Illinois program offers four years of free tuition at all state colleges and universities for the dependent children of soldiers killed in action. California does not have a similar program.

Illinois has a National Guard of 13,000 members and a force of 14,000 reservists. California’s National Guard has 20,000 members, and its reserve force is approximately 83,000.

In its three years of operation, the Illinois Military Family Relief Program has been able to help more than 6,600 National Guard and reserve families with payments totaling more than $3.4 million, Schuller said.

To start the Illinois program, Gov. Rod Blagojevich successfully asked that state’s Legislature for $5 million in general fund support. “That is what really got the ball rolling,” Schuller said.

Bustamante said he proposed starting out the California program with $1 million but that it was eliminated in the budget process.

To gain public awareness and support, Schuller maintains a website -- operationhomefront.org -- that works closely with veterans organizations and stages celebrity fundraisers.

As a result, the Illinois fund has received more than $500,000 in private contributions.

As it now stands, the California program is funded primarily by taxpayer checkoff contributions listed at the end of the state return. In 2005, taxpayers dedicated $282,000 to the fund, only slightly above the $250,000 cutoff level that would cause it to be delisted on the tax returns.

Most of the 11 other funds listed in the tax return checkoff boxes raised more money, including $624,264 for “Rare and Endangered Species.”

So far, Cooper said, the California relief fund has received $10,000 in private donations.

One of the three families to receive a grant from the California Military Family Relief Fund was Steve and Theresa Edwards of San Jose. As a member of the California National Guard, Sgt. Steve Edwards served in Balad, Iraq, north of Baghdad, from February 2004 to March 2005.

When he returned, he suffered what has been diagnosed as an acute case of post-traumatic stress syndrome that has left him paranoid and unable to work. On his worst days, Edwards, who had been a top soldier in Iraq, wrapped himself in a blanket and just sat on the couch.

Struggling to deal with a dysfunctional husband and a 10-year-old daughter, Theresa Edwards called her husband’s battalion, the 579th Engineers in Santa Rosa, for help last summer and was told for the first time about the California Military Family Relief Fund.

“I had to go looking for it; it wasn’t offered up,” she said.

Every California application, Cooper said, is reviewed by a committee of 12 to 14 people, including military lawyers and social workers. The Edwardses’ application for $2,000 was approved within days. “It was really significant because we did not have the money to pay rent that month,” Theresa Edwards said.

Six months later, she applied for another grant but was told by military authorities that she was only eligible to apply once.

Jakob Schiller, a Northern California student journalist and part of a Los Angeles Times-UC Berkeley ongoing project on the California National Guard, contributed to this report.

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By the numbers

Comparing the California Military Family Relief Fund to a similar effort in Illinois:

* Families aided by California fund in its first year: 3

* Families aided by Illinois fund in its first year: 2,682

* Amount paid by California fund in its first year: $7,687

* Amount paid by Illinois fund in its first year: $1.1 million

* Support from California general fund: $0

* Support from Illinois general fund: $5 million

* Private donations to California fund (2004-06): $10,000

* Private donations to Illinois fund (2003-06): $500,000

Sources: California National Guard, California Tax Franchise Board, Illinois Office of the Lieutenant Governor, Department of Defense.

Reporting by Rone Tempest

Los Angeles Times