First of all, I’d like to explain that all Regional Offices are assigned a three-digit identifier number to confuse somebody somewhere. The Russians in case they attack? Why not just call it what it is? Columbia, South Carolina is, for example, VBACOL319. The numbering system begins at 301 with Boston. There are gaps in the numbering to allow for future VAROs to be inserted but the numbering would appear to be in the order they were added. VBAPROV304 is Providence, R.I.  VBANYC306 is New York City. Some states have more than one Regional Office. California has three ( San Diego(377), Oakland(343) and LA(344). 

VAROs beginning with a 400 prefix, as near as I can see, report to one of the 300-series Regional Offices. I do know If you call the Fort Harrison, Montana Regional office (436) the polite receptionist in Salt Lake City (341) picks up. The Anchorage, AK (463) office is answered in Seattle (346). And so on.

Few people know it but back in the late ’80s, the industrious raters in San Juan Puerto Rico (355) discovered a way to make some extra income on the side by cozying up to their local counterparts in the VSO offices and began selling ratings. The standard rate was $300 for a DC 6260 Tinnitus rating. The price went up from there. Everything was fine until some poor Veteran complained about the high cost. $300 was serious folding money back then and a tinnitus claim at 10% was only about $70 a month. The upshot  of the whole thing was San Juan’s raters were forbidden to write anything more than dependency ratings. The authority was transferred to Columbia S.C. for about five years. San Juan’s raters went through an ethics class and were “reprogrammed” to do it properly. Shoot, knowing VA, they probably even got a promotion up to DROs.

The following story is a study in incongruity to me. Back in about 2013, under the tutelage of Under Secretary for Benefits (USB) Allison Hickey, the National Work Queue (NWQ) was instituted. All the claims from across our country, including Manila and San Juan, all went into what can best be described as a Bingo Ball hopper. Each ‘ball’ (read claim) was pulled out and worked in the order it arrived-or so they said. If they screwed something up and a Congressman/woman pitched a bitch, the claim was pulled out and worked immediately by VBADC397-the Appeals Management Center (AMC) which has been renamed about 50 times and was, after the advent of the new AMA, renamed the the Office of Administrative Review (OAR). The OAR generally handled all the BVA remands but was repurposed after the new AMA came into effect. It is now one of three Decision Review Operations Centers or simply DROCs-the other two being St. Pete’s and Seattle.  Gradually, Veterans noticed that their ratings decisions (RDs) no longer had the location of their local Fort Fumble emblazoned at the top.

Now, the only way to determine who wrote your grant or denial is to view the ‘Notes’ section in the Veteran’s VBMS efolder to see who ‘worked’ it. As a general rule, the NWQ would assign the file to the very next rater who found his inbasket empty. So why did my Vet Harry get such speshull treatment from his hometown Regional Office? And why, pray tell, did they send it over to the Washington DC DROC to do the R1 reduction proposal on what can only be seen as a poorly-attempted screwover that was destined to backfire?

The raters in Columbia seem to have had it in for ol’ Harry since his first attempt to summit Mount VA in 2002. And 2010. And 2011. And on and on. It did get better by 2017 when he managed to snag his Aid and Attendance but no one in their right minds could honestly say he didn’t qualify for it. But all his ratings happened at Columbia-not Albany NY or San Diego. For some inexplicable reason, the boys at Columbia have had a death grip on every claim he’s ever filed. It’s as if the NWQ claims hopper doesn’t exist in Columbia.

Which brings us up to the present. Knowing Harry’s on his last legs medically, I felt compelled to clear up some old unfinished business even though it was a low-value claim. By now, I’d gotten him the loss of use of his upper and lower extremities and R1. It’s the principle of the matter to me to not leave any money on the table. He was entitled to a bump up from SMC L to L ½ right after  they cut the paper on his A&A in 2017 under §3.350(f)(3) and they blew him off. In addition, six months later, he got another 100% schedular for his lung disease which entitled him to the bump up from the SMC L ½ to M under §3.350(f)(4). Yep. They told him to go suck eggs on that one, too. It was subtle. It’s called implicit denial. VA’s take on this is simple. They deny by just not doing it. It’s up to you to ‘see’ the error and complain. In Harry’s case, they (the village idiots in Columbia) wouldn’t even concede they screwed it up when I CUE’d them. So I went back up to the BVA and laid it out in three part harmony for the Veteran’s Law Judge (VLJ).

LS/MFT-Liquid Sunshine Means Fried Targets

Well, being intelligent, the folks up at BVA VACO (BVA Central Office) saw right off that the Columbia raters couldn’t count to twenty even if they took off their shoes but then that anomaly generally exists at all Regional Offices. The SMC ‘calculator’ quits working right after SMC S and refuses to spit out the correct SMC rating. Any rating over SMC L has to be overridden and entered manually. Funny how that works, huh?

Now, Harry had won his ‘bumps’ at the BVA and the decision was returned to the NWQ to be effectuated and  the shekels distributed. But here’s where it gets queer. I know I’ve told a lot of you that it’s nothing more than an old VSO wives’ tale that VA raters have a unwritten program whereby they will attempt to reduce your ratings if you keep filing more claims. My classic example proving it untrue was if they do, how in Sam Hill did I get to 290% (two 100% schedulars, a 60, a 40, two 30s, a 20 and a 10 for my tinnitus) without getting a punitive haircut? I expect because it never rose above the level of SMC S. R1 is $9,267 a month and a whole different ballgame, apparently.

Take a gander below at the June 27, 2023 Rating Decision the VBA397 Washington DROC handed down. Vindictive? You don’t know the half of it. Not only did they begrudgingly cut the paper granting the bumps, but a decision was made somewhere up in the USB hierarchy to teach ol’ Harry (and by extension, me) that this kind of tomfoolery would not be tolerated by Denis the Menace. In fact, my/our effrontery would be punished to dissuade others from such conduct. It might have worked on some chucklehead snowflake VSO but not a combat Veteran. Granted, I’m no big boy like Combat Craig™ but I can hold my own in the litigation arena. Page one of the Code sheet couldn’t have made it more clear who we were dealing with. Even more obvious was that the decision was signed by the Assistant Director of the OAR.

redact CS ^ bump and CUE reduction

 What the VA poobahs proposed to do was take Harry’s old 2017 SMC a&a rating away due to a now-perceived CUE and reduce him down to SMC O for his two SMC Ls for loss of upper and lower extremities. Without that old 2017 L for aid and attendance, he wasn’t eligible for the R1. That’s a pretty drastic haircut financially and knowing their vindictiveness, I’m sure they were positively drooling at the opportunity to tote up the amount erroneously paid out back to 2017 and reduce him to abject poverty-and by extension his wife’s DIC for the rest of her natural born life as well- after the poor guy had passed on.

I was taught to never occupy a static position. You’re a sitting duck the longer you camp out there and do nothing.  When attacked, you attack right back-in spades. If they’re throwing hand grenades at you, return fire with the four deuce mortars and call in an air strike RFN.  I learned early on that nothing conveys that exquisite emotion of F___ You more eloquently than napalm and CBUs (liquid sunshine and Black Cats in our ’70s vernacular). Too bad we’re forbidden to use them in VA law. Harry had a spare 100% schedular for his Interstitial Lung disease and I’d debated using it to get him back-to-back A&As for R1 when he first approached me for representation. However, his loss of use of his extremities due to the Parkinson’s would provide him with an automobile and Specially Adaptive Housing (SAH) so I opted for that line of attack. It took a couple of years but we prevailed and I thought we’d put this puppy to bed- and then this cheap shot began. Shit. The guy is dying. How much more would he cost VA if they just let it ride? Too much, apparently.

So I filed for a new A&A entitlement solely for the lung disease and boy howdy did I have the airpower to back it up. Check it out. I’m sure the OAR folks stared at it for several weeks like a Rubik’s Cube trying to figure how to deny him and follow through with their proposed reduction. It didn’t pan out. They must have sent it back over to Columbia (again) who were forced to concede they’d run out of hand grenades. But the thing that grabbed my eyeballs was the concession on page 3 saying- “This proposal to reduce you from R1 to SMC O has been withdrawn. We have magnanimously decided to call in the dogs and piss on our proposal-to-reduce fire. Move along. Nothing to see here. As you were, Harry. ” Withdrawn? More like “We admit we stepped on our dicks.”

redact filed a&a 7.25.2023

Redact final RD protected R1

redact final code sheet 10.11.2023

During the war, I always packed a couple of hand grenades everywhere I went-even to the loo. Old habits die hard. Rest in Peace, Harry. You earned. it. Like ol’ Zac Brown says in his song…

You know I like my chicken fried
Cold beer on a Friday night
A pair of jeans that fit just right
And the radio up.

I don’t think there’s anything more satisfying than bearding the VA lion in his own den.

The M 26 Dupont Spinner for fishing

See you in DFW next week, folks.