Veterans Commission to Review Grant Panel with $31 Million Round Already Open

The Texas Veterans Commission will meet Nov. 10 in Austin and take up the volunteer panel that scores its veterans grants, three weeks before applications close on a round worth about $31 million.

The Fund for Veterans’ Assistance is the state’s main pot of money for organizations that work with veterans directly — housing and home repair, counseling, food and financial aid, transportation, legal help, veterans treatment courts, county service offices. Most of it comes from a lottery game the Legislature set aside for veterans, topped up by the voluntary dollar-or-more donations Texans tick off when they renew a driver’s license, register a vehicle or buy a hunting license. The commission does not grade the applications itself. A nine-member advisory committee does, drawn from veterans’ groups and nonprofits, barred from any organization holding an open grant or planning to apply for one, and required to sign conflict-of-interest agreements.

Two items concern that committee: one evaluating it, which state law requires an agency to do for its advisory committees, and one recommending who should sit on it. The timing is close. The application portal opened Oct. 2 and closes at 5 p.m. Dec. 2. Neither the notice nor anything the commission has published says whether the committee will be seated in time to score this round.

The round itself changes shape. Grants will run 24 months rather than a year, at $50,000 to $600,000 apiece, with most applicants limited to three. That makes the totals hard to set beside the last cycle, which put $40.8 million into 160 organizations on a one-year footing.

Members will also elect officers, as the commission must each year. They cannot elect their chair — the governor designates that, and Laura Koerner has held it since 2020 — but the vice chair’s post is theirs to fill, and the commission’s own website lists it as empty. The body is short-handed besides: four of five seats are filled, the newest by an October appointment the agency’s roster page has not caught up with. Reports on veterans’ benefits claims, service dogs and women veterans will round out the morning, each answering a reporting duty the Legislature wrote into statute. What to watch is whether the commission names the grant panel Nov. 10 or holds it over; with the window shutting Dec. 2, a delay would squeeze the scoring.

Meeting at a glance

Commission members

• Laura Koerner — chairwoman; Fair Oaks Ranch; Navy veteran and engineer.
• Charles “Chuck” Wright — secretary; Frisco; former Marine Corps helicopter pilot.
• Chris Cantu — Hutto; retired Air Force colonel and wealth manager.
• Todd Wetsel — Amarillo; bank senior vice president; Army veteran.
• Vice chair’s post vacant; one of the five seats unfilled.

The commission’s own commissioners page, checked November 2, shows Koerner, Wright and Cantu and marks both the vice chair’s post and one member seat vacant; it does not yet list Todd Wetsel, whom the governor appointed October 14 to a term running to 2031. The Dispatch therefore counts four seats filled and one vacant. Chris Cantu’s hometown is given as Hutto in the governor’s August appointment release and as Leander in an agency welcome notice; the governor’s version is used here. Composition, six-year terms and the veteran requirements are set by Government Code Chapter 434. Meeting contact: Cheryl Aldridge, (512) 463-0504.