A.G. Gancarski
On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis keynoted a groundbreaking ceremony for a long awaited VA Clinic in St. Johns County.
For years, a permanent location for a VA clinic for the St. Augustine area’s veterans has been sought.
On Friday, the groundbreaking commenced, and state officials were joined by federal and local officials as ground was broken for the new St. Augustine Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic.
The 16,595-square-foot facility is expected to be finished by the end of 2020.
DeSantis, who previously represented this area in Congress, talked at some length about the process of getting this done.
“It’s really exciting,” the Governor told a crowd of roughly 100, “given how long we’ve been working on this.”
“From the day I got in [to Congress], this is something I’ve been working for,” DeSantis said, noting a subcommittee hearing he chaired in Congress “to get the VA to move as quickly as possible.”
DeSantis then talked about his time in Congress, a Spartan era where he slept in his office and would often start his day off with jogs that took him to the Lincoln Memorial.
“When you went into the Lincoln Memorial, they had writings from a lot of his speeches,” DeSantis said, including the President’s second Inaugural Address.
“It always struck me … this was 1865, we’d been fighting a Civil War for four years. It was kind of coming to an end,” DeSantis noted, “people knew where that was going.”
Trying to “bring the country together,” Lincoln (per DeSantis) stressed “how important it is that the federal government take care of those who have borne the costs of battle,” as well as “surviving spouses.”
DeSantis noted also that the “VA can only do so much,” noting that state, local, and nongovernmental actors also have a part to play in ensuring veterans are taken care of.
The Governor notably pushed for a former VA Secretary, Peter O’Rourke, to become Executive Director of the Florida Republican Party. That move was steeped in controversy in some quarters.
Any hopes of getting DeSantis to weigh in on VA matters further were dashed when after an hourlong ceremony the Governor was whisked into a waiting black SUV without taking questions from press.
