NC veterans cemeteries need work to look ‘like Arlington.’ How they might get fixed.

North Carolina has four state-owned veterans cemeteries. And all four are behind on maintenance, short-staffed and in need of money, according to the leader of the state agency overseeing them.

There are more than 720,000 military veterans living in North Carolina. The four cemeteries were built in locations with the highest concentrations of veterans. Burial plots are free for qualifying veterans, their spouses and some dependents. Headstones are ordered from the federal government and placed by the state.

Ron Fogle of Fuquay-Varina attended a community meeting in Spring Lake about the status of the Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery. Some people there said they had waited many months for headstones to be placed and gravesites to be beautified, Fogle told The News & Observer.

He thinks the legislature should fully fund and staff the cemeteries and that veterans buried there “deserve better care and dignity.”

“It seems to boil down to adequate and recurring funding that meets national veterans cemeteries standards, maintenance pay levels to keep staff, and administrative oversight to insure that grave stones are ordered in a timely manner and not months later,” he said.

“As a Vietnam veteran, I firmly believe that the veterans who are buried in these cemeteries and their surviving families deserve the utmost service and support from the State of North Carolina,” Fogle said in an email. “The state needs to honor the commitment made when it accepted these cemeteries built on behalf of veterans.”

Lt. Gen. Walter Gaskin, secretary of the N.C. Department of Military & Veterans Affairs, says they need an additional $1 million a year from the state.

“The deal that we made with the (federal) government is you build them, we keep them,” he told lawmakers last week. The state has to maintain federal standards for its cemeteries, but is struggling to do so.

The four cemeteries see about 600 burials a year, he said. The agency has 119 employees, with 30 at headquarters.

Next steps for fixing cemeteries

Rep. Diane Wheatley, a Cumberland County Republican, attended the Spring Lake meeting. She said cemeteries should have enough permanent staff so they can have upkeep equivalent to other military cemeteries.

“It would seem to me there would be a better correlation between, and partnership with, the active-duty military base that is sitting right there, with their own cemetery nearby at Fort Bragg,” Wheatley told Gaskin during a meeting of lawmakers.

Gaskin said that the state-owned cemeteries have to be separate from the federal ones. There are eight permanent staff and a superintendent for each cemetery, he said, and they need more staff with better pay.

After years of pay he described as “atrocious,” grounds workers’ pay has recently improved. According to the state employees salary database, salaries for Veterans Affairs grounds workers are now at $41,451 a year. That’s higher than grounds worker salaries in the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, Department of Administration and Department of Health and Human Services, which have salaries in the mid-$30,000s.

Cemetery grounds worker duties extend beyond mowing grass, Gaskin said, including tombstone placement and debris cleanup.

Rep. Marvin Lucas, a Cumberland County Democrat who lives about a mile from the Sandhills cemetery, said he has seen employees there overloaded with work.

“Those workers are under the eight-ball,” Lucas said.

“We want to keep it like Arlington (National Cemetery) and the only way to do that is to work to remove the debris ... So please know that the money is not sufficient,” Lucas said.

The House Military Affairs Committee chair, Rep. Edward Goodwin, designated committee members Lucas and Wheatley to lead the charge on the issue.

“Trust me. We’ll fix this,” Goodwin, an Edenton Republican, told Gaskin.

On Wednesday, Wheatley filed House Bill 178, which would require the N.C. Department of Military & Veterans Affairs to “enhance overall maintenance” of the four cemeteries, including addressing headstone delays, drainage and flooding, debris cleanup and patching areas that do not have grass. If the bill passes, the agency would have to submit a report by Oct. 1 assessing any needed changes to its policies.

Staffing issues

Gaskin said that he loses staff to other cemeteries that pay more money, and has to use temporary employees. North Carolina has had a state employee staffing shortage statewide of more than 20% for the past year.

Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery is not the only one with maintenance problems.

Gaskin said that while Sandhills cemetery was the one that got behind the most, “all of them are behind.”

The other three state-owned veterans cemeteries are Western Carolina State Veterans Cemetery in Black Mountain, Eastern Carolina State Veterans Cemetery in Goldsboro and Coastal Carolina State Veterans Cemetery in Jacksonville.

Gaskin told The N&O his agency has “never been able to do the long-term beautification requirements and upkeep of machinery and stuff.”

But if he had the additional $1 million to support the cemeteries, he said, he could pay contractors to work on a backlog of maintenance like overgrowth at the cemeteries.

“It’s not a lot of money,” he said.

Rep. Jason Saine, a Lincolnton Republican, is one of the powerful head chairs of the House Appropriations Committee, which writes the state budget. Asked about the cemeteries, Saine referred The N&O to Rep. George Cleveland, a vice chair on the Military Affairs Committee, saying Cleveland had a “bee in his bonnet” about it.

Cleveland, a Jacksonville Republican, said lawmakers had arranged funding for the department, moving money around to provide it to the cemeteries. Gaskin said that the money is coming from funds referred to as “lapsed salaries” rather than being directly appropriated.

“It’s piss-poor management,” Cleveland told The N&O on Tuesday. He said as far as cemeteries are concerned, “it’s a management problem.”

Cleveland declined to share specifics.

“I will not get into a public discussion about whose fault it is, outside of the fact that it is a management problem,” he said.

Saine told The N&O recently that he doesn’t have a problem with funding the cemeteries.

“I support it. We should take care of these things,” Saine said.

Budget season at the state legislature has already begun, as lawmakers consider what to do with an anticipated $3.25 billion surplus.

Just under 15% of lawmakers have military experience, which is more than double the nearly 7% of North Carolinians who are veterans. The General Assembly has 25 members who have served in the military — six in the Senate and 19 in the House.