Amendment is #1, vets say

With all the attention being paid to the presidential race and the fight for control of the State Senate, there’s another item on the ballot which has gone completely unnoticed.
After all the contests for President, Congress, State Senate, Assembly and various judgeships, voters who pay attention will find “Question No. 1” to amend the State Constitution.
Right now, all civil service jobs and promotions in New York are on a “point system,” and all wartime military veterans get points for service - five points for the original job and two-and-a-half points for promotion.
Under the current law, veterans who were “disabled in the actual performance of duty in any war” and receiving disability payments from the Veterans’ Administration get double - 10 points for the job and five for promotion.
Only the Veteran’s Administration doesn’t exist anymore. It’s the United States Department of Veterans Affairs now. The Amendment changes the name of the agency.
The amendment also changes the requirement that a disabled veteran be receiving payments, or that the disability be the result of line-of-duty-in-wartime injury.
Under the proposed amendment, certification from the Department of Veterans Affairs that a disability was “in existence at the time of application” would earn the veteran the extra points.
According to veterans advocate Pat Toro, who heads the New York Chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, “Veterans with a less-than-10-percent disability don’t receive payments. They still have a disability, though.”
The scoring of civil service exams is a multi-step affair. First, three-point ranges of “raw scores” - the number of questions answered correctly - are grouped into “bands” in five-point increments. All failing scores are band-scored as 60.
So veteran’s bonuses can make a big difference in getting a job and could have no effect in getting a promotion.
In real numbers, the change will have only a small effect, because very few veterans have such a minor disability, according to Toro. “The numbers are really very small, but if it can help even one vet, we’re all for it,” he said.