Tester Secures More Than $2.7 Million in Funding to Expand Montana State Veterans Cemetery at Fort Harrison

Tester secured this grant funding in fiscal year 2024 government funding bill

Following his sustained efforts to ensure Montana veterans are properly memorialized close to home, U.S. Senator Jon Tester secured more than $2.7 million in funding for the state of Montana to expand the Montana State Veterans Cemetery in Fort Harrison, Montana.

"Making sure Montana veterans have a final resting place that honors their service and sacrifice is critical to preserving their legacies," said Tester. "An important part of doing this is ensuring we have space to honor them right here at home, and I'm proud to have secured this funding to expand the Montana State Veterans Cemetery at Fort Harrison. This expansion will allow us to properly memorialize our veterans and their families for decades to come in the Treasure State."

As Chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee and a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Tester secured this funding to expand the Montana State Veterans Cemetery through the Veterans Cemetery Grants Program (VCGP) in the federal funding bill for fiscal year 2024. He has consistently fought to increase funding for the VCGP.

The Montana State Veterans Cemetery at Fort Harrison serves more than 22,000 veterans and their eligible family members. The grant money will fund 300 pre-placed crypts, 800 columbarium niches, 500 cremains gravesites, and additional landscaping. VA also announced it will reimburse the state of Montana nearly $350,000 for the cost of fabricating and delivering pre-place crypts used for the expansion.

A staunch supporter of veterans' cemeteries and memorials, Tester championed the Veterans Cemetery Grants Improvement Act in 2020 to help states, territories, and tribal governments cover the increasing costs of operating and maintaining state-run veteran cemeteries. In 2022, Tester also championed a bipartisan effort to support tribal veterans' cemeteries by closing the bureaucratic loophole preventing them from receiving plot allowances. Additionally, he shepherded the National Cemeteries Preservation and Protection Act of 2022 through Congress, which allows for the National Cemetery Administration (NCA) to pay plot allowances to tribal cemeteries retroactively, conduct green burials, prevents sexual predators from being interred in our national cemeteries, and cuts red tape on future land transfers to national cemeteries-ensuring further expansion of these shrines.

Continuing his legislative push to memorialize veterans, this Congress Tester coauthored the bipartisan Mark Our Place Actwhich would allow the NCA to furnish new headstones and markers for Medal of Honor recipients who served prior to 1917.