A County Veteran Services department assists veterans, dependents, and survivors with all federal and state veterans benefits to which they’re entitled.
About 9% of Oneida County residents are veterans.
The current Oneida County Veteran Services Officer is set to retire next week after 20 years.
Disagreement over her successor came to a head in this week’s Oneida County Board meeting.
The hiring committee said it interviewed five candidates for the County Veterans Services Officer or CVSO.
Ultimately Matthew Young was recommended to the county board for the position.
The decision upset some veterans who wanted to see the current assistant CVSO Jason Dailey selected for it.
Several gave public comment at Tuesday’s board meeting saying Dailey already has the experience doing this work.
“The veterans were absolutely ignored in this county in this decision,” Brian Bennett said during public comment.
Bennett is a veteran who’s worked with Dailey for years. His objection, like some of the other veterans that spoke, wasn’t necessarily against Young, but that they know Dailey and know that he does good work.
“What matters is that these guys back here have all worked with Jason for 10 years. We trust him. We know him,” said Bennett. “For reasons that utterly baffle us, the Human Services Committee has chosen a candidate without a single day's experience over the qualified candidate with over 10 years experience.”
Dailey was being trained by the retiring CVSO Tammy Javenkoski to replace her.
“Behind that beard and those tattoos is a man who only wants to make the lives of veterans and their families better,” said Javenkoski. “There's literally no one in this world that knows better than I who would be best to be my successor.”
Dailey was interviewed for the role. The Human Services Committee ultimately recommended to the county board Matthew Young.
Supervisor Dan Hess was part of the hiring committee process.
“Based on my extensive objective review on all of the applicants, with taking into account the job description, applications, qualifications, resumes, interviews and military, I chose Matthew Young as the number one candidate,” said Hess. “He meets all the criteria, and I think he would provide excellence for our veterans in Oneida County, which is required.”
There were concerns about accreditation required for the position that Young would need to get and what delays that might create for veteran services.
“It's my understanding that the accreditation process is not unusual for people that don't have that accreditation prior to accepting a Veteran Service Officer position that it's pretty standard protocol that they get that accreditation after they're hired,” said Supervisor Robb Jensen.
The County Board voted 12 to 9 to election Matthew Young over Jason Daily as the next Oneida County Veteran Services Officer.
“I know there's a lot of people worried about accreditations and people falling off of cliffs,” Matthew Young told the board. “I should have fallen off of many cliffs, but I'm still standing here in front of you all today.”
According to the resolution passed by the board regarding the hire, Young is expected to start immediately to have overlap training for the position.
