Wnited States Senate WASHINGTON, DC 20510 March 29, 2016 ‘The Honorable Robert A. McDonald Secretary of Veterans Affairs 810 Vermont Ave., NW Washington, DC 20420 Dear Secretary McDonald, Members of the Utah Delegation wrote to your predecessor in 2012 to discuss the need for the Department of Veterans Affairs to better accommodate the growing veterans population in Northem Utah. We wish to again raise our concerns, and look forward to working with you in addressing this issue in 2016. ‘The State of Utah is proud to be the home of over 150,000 of our nation’s veterans, a number that includes retirees, business owners, moms and dads with young children, and many who are living with injuries sustained in combat. Utah's communities, businesses, and state government have gone to great lengths to ensure that Utah is a place where veterans can achieve a high standard of living, whether they have just returned to civilian life or have been out the service for 50 years. Utah has three Veterans Centers ~ located in Salt Lake City, Provo, and St George — to provide critical mental-health and counseling services to veterans and their families. However, nearly a quarter of the veterans living in Utah reside around, and north of, Ogden City, which means they must drive a two hour or longer roundtrip in order to access these services in Sali Lake City. For many of these veterans, taking this amount of time away from work and family is a major obstacle to sceking the treatment they need. We are grateful that professionals from the Salt Lake City Veterans Center are able to operate in a mobile capacity at the George E. Wahlen Veteran's Nursing Home in Ogden several times a week; however, this is not an adequate long-term solution for the nearly 40,000 veterans and their families living in this area. In our previous letter, dated August 23, 2012, we asked Secretary Shinseki to evaluate whether the Northern Utah atea qualifies to have its own Veterans Center. It is now nearly four years since that correspondence, and we would like to engage with you on this subject again,We are also keenly aware of the complex challenges that you inherited at the VA and the difficult task you have at reorienting the agency towards better service to our veterans. It is also our desire that you have the budgetary and political flexibility to implement much needed reforms, such as reducing the backlog on veterans’ claims and providing more expedient medical services. In light of that, we would like to further hear from you about alternative approaches to providing better mental health services to veterans and their families that the VA is considering in addition to a permanent Vets Center in Northern Utah, This includes full implementation of the VA Choice program, which allows veterans to have better medical access and free up resources for use in other areas. ‘To meet the serious needs of America’s veterans and the challenges facing the VA we need to think outside the box on how best to make use of our resources, 50 we stand ready to help in whatever capacity we can on developing new, more effective and efficient ways to address the deficiencies like we have identified in Northern Utah. We thank you in advance for your time and look forward to your response. Hi. Chi Bp Mike Lee Orrin Hateh United States Senate United States Senate Rob Bishop United States House of Representatives