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21-year-old form key to GI Bill bennies for E-7

A retired soldier who encountered a paperwork foul-up when he tried to get his GI Bill benefits has learned he will receive those benefits — without having to produce an obscure document from 21 years ago.

“We have resolved the issue,” said Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman Steve Westerfeld, noting that the Defense Manpower Data Center has confirmed that retired Army Sgt. 1st Class Jim Kimmel is eligible for Montgomery GI Bill benefits.

When VA officials told him last November that it would be late February or March before the problem would be resolved, Kimmell said, he realized he couldn’t afford to go to school “just hoping they’ll get it ironed out some day.” By the time the problem was resolved, it was too late for him to start the latest semester.

After all was said and done, Kimmel said, “I was a little disappointed. You expect it to be as advertised. I thought it was a matter of showing you’re enrolled in school.”

Kimmel thought he was doing all he needed to do when he paid his $1,200 for Montgomery GI Bill benefits as a young recruit in his first year of service more than two decades ago.

And before he went to Afghanistan a few years ago, he opted to “buy up” his GI Bill, paying $600 for an additional $5,400 in future benefits.

But once the retired soldier actually tried to use the benefits, he was told he first had to produce a Defense Department form from 21 years ago to prove he had signed up for the GI Bill in the first place.

“I never had trouble getting them to take my money. Now it’s getting them to hold up their end of the bargain,” said Kimmel, who retired Aug. 1 and started school Aug. 20. He lives in Bandera, Texas.

Kimmel was at a standstill after trying for more than six months to get his benefits. But after Military Times began asking VA about Kimmel’s situation, Keith Wilson, director of the VA’s Veterans Benefit Administration Education Service, looked into the matter personally, and within days had verified with the Defense Manpower Data Center that Kimmel is eligible. Kimmel said VA officials notified him Wednesday that his reimbursement for his months in school would arrive within five days.

As a rule, Wilson said, once service members and veterans apply for GI Bill benefits and provide proof of enrollment in school, they have to provide “zero” documentation to get actual payments later.

“We receive the rest of the information directly from the Defense Department,” he said in a Jan. 10 interview. “The election form ... shouldn’t make one bit of difference.”

Wilson also noted that Kimmel never would have been able to “buy up” his GI Bill benefits a few years ago had he not contributed the initial $1,200 enrollment fee.

But the mix-up has forced Kimmel to delay his college education. He had to leave school before the current semester started because he was unable to get the GI Bill benefits that would largely cover his tuition. The benefits, with his “buy-up,” are now $1,251 a month for up to 36 months for full-time students.

A letter in July from the VA regional office in Muskogee, Okla., told Kimmel, erroneously, that he had to send a copy of his DD Form 2366 showing that he had elected to sign up for the GI Bill and had authorized the Army to deduct the $1,200 enrollment fee in $100 monthly increments over his first year of service. At the time he signed up, in 1986, the program did not have automatic enrollment as it does now.

Kimmel didn’t have the form — he gave it to Army finance officials 21 years ago when he authorized them to take the enrollment fee out of his pay.

Joe Sharpe, deputy director of the economics department at the American Legion, said he receives “a lot of complaints” about the timeliness of GI Bill payments.

“Paperwork is not done, forcing students to pay out of pocket — that’s a big problem,” he said, adding that his office helps many veterans work out these issues with VA.

In congressional testimony late last year, Wilson said VA processed original GI Bill claims in 32.4 days and supplemental claims in 13.2 days in fiscal 2007, compared to 40.1 and 19.8 days in fiscal 2006.