Fix found for Children of Wartime Veterans Scholarships program

State will take next semester's money to cover some of this semester's costs.

Posted 4:24 p.m. Dec 17, 2019 — Updated 7:46 p.m. Dec 17, 2019

Travis Fain

, WRAL statehouse reporter

RALEIGH, N.C. — A state scholarship program for veterans' children will fill this semester's budget hole by borrowing from next semester's funding.

That will fully fund the scholarships for this semester and moot notices students received asking them to cover costs they thought the program had handled.

Gov. Roy Cooper's office made the announcement Monday, and the state's Department of Military and Veteran Affairs said it would immediately send word to universities. The legislature will have to take action next year to replace the money and make the program whole for spring semester.

The General Assembly goes back into session next month and can address the matter as soon as then. There's about $2.4 million at issue, a non-recurring funding increase the legislature gave the Children of Wartime Veterans Scholarships last year that didn't make it into this year's state budget as the legislature's Republican majority jousted with Cooper, a Democrat, over budget details.

In a statement Monday, Cooper said it's "unconscionable that legislators failed to adequately fund this program, leaving students in the lurch."

Both sides have pointed fingers at the other, but what's clear is that the extra money didn't make it into the series of so-called "mini budgets" the GOP majority passed to get around an impasse with the governor, who had vetoed the overall budget proposal. When the problem became obvious, legislative leaders pointed to the program's bank account, essentially saying the DMVA should do what the governor has now decided it will do instead of letting universities send students bills.

"In the light most favorable to DMVA, they're incompetent for waiting four months to disburse any of the $9.19 million in scholarship funds they had sitting in their account since July," Sen. Danny Britt, R-Robeson, said in a statement. "In the light least favorable to DMVA, they intentionally withheld that money so they could falsely tell recipients that the legislature hadn't provided any funding. Either way, it's wrong."

The program, funded right now at about $9.2 million a year, serves some 1,200 students.

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