In the first full week of the 2020 legislative session, both the House and Senate Veterans and Military Affairs committees held hearings, but Veterans legislation wasn’t the focus. Rather, both committees used most of their time to collect information from presenters.

On Tuesday, the House Veterans and Military Affairs committee heard presentations from the Minnesota Departments of Veterans Affairs and Military Affairs, as well as the University of Minnesota’s Student Veterans Association. The committee will not meet next week due to the scheduled precinct caucuses throughout the state.

The Senate Veterans and Military Affairs committee met on Thursday morning. It heard a presentation from the Department of Military Affairs and approved a few national guard related bills.

The one Veterans related bill that did move was SF 3269 authored by Sen. Jason Rarick. The bill simply adds the words ‘prevention’ and ‘and’ to create ‘Veterans Suicide Prevention and Awareness Day’, which was passed into law last year. SF3269 was approved by the Senate Veterans committee and was moved to the Senate floor where it will await a full vote by the chamber.

The Senate committee will meet next week and hear presentations from MDVA regarding the CORE Program and Veterans Health Care reserve fund and staffing report. The committee will meet on Thursday, Feb. 27 at 8:30 in room 1100 of the Minnesota Senate Building.

The House Judiciary Committee will hear HF 998, authored by Rep. Rob Ecklund. This bill is known as the Veterans Restorative Justice Act. The meeting will take place at 9:45 a.m. in Room 10 of the State Office Building.