Larry Shellito, retired head of the Minnesota National Guard, will face competing demands as the new commissioner of the state's Department of Veterans Affairs, as a growing number of younger vets seek better educational benefits and programs for reintegration while older vets need more specialized and expensive health care.
Shellito was named to the $108,000-a-year post Wednesday by Gov. Mark Dayton, who cited Shellito's "deep personal commitment to improving the quality of services for all Minnesota veterans and to increasing access to them."
The pick is DFLer Dayton's third from among people who served under Republican former Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Dayton also asked Pawlenty's transportation commissioner, Tom Sorel, to stay at his post and picked as head of the Minnesota Management and Budget agency Jim Schowalter, a former deputy commissioner.
Shellito, 65, a Vietnam veteran who stepped down as head of the Minnesota Guard while facing mandatory retirement, said he actively sought the Veterans Affairs post, which coordinates programs and resources for the state's 131,000 veterans and their dependents.
"I threw my hat in the ring. One day you just wake up and say, 'There's still a lot of work that needs to be done,'" he said.
Under his guidance, the Guard began a pioneering Beyond the Yellow Ribbon campaign, which worked to ease the transition and reintegration of soldiers and their families after a deployment. It became the template for similar national programs for the Reserve, Guard components and active military.
The state faces a $6.2 billion budget deficit, but Shellito said he would work to sustain current $112.5 million funding for the department, the bulk of which is taken up with providing health care, including operating five veterans homes statewide. He said he also will work to break down barriers between state and federal programs, and will encourage such things as coordinating medical care on the local level for outstate veterans who might find it inconvenient to travel to VA Medical Centers in Fargo, St. Cloud or Minneapolis.
"Everyone is going to expect that peace dividend," he said. "I grew up as a Vietnam veteran when a nation decided not to talk about it for 20 years. We need to ... honor their service. My biggest fear is that troops now, with all these deployments and redeployments and all the good ink they are getting, think this is normal, and a lot of veterans say, 'No, it's not.'"
