• ✔ Lower costs, Higher Wages.

    Families are squeezed by rising:

    ✔ Utility bills

    ✔ Groceries

    ✔ Insurance premiums

    ✔ Housing costs

    ✔ Property taxes

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  • ✔ Fully funded education for every child in House District 4.

    ✔ Supporting teachers and classrooms.

    ✔ Workforce development & career technical education.

    ✔ Partnerships with local universities and industry

  • ✔ Affordable healthcare - a necessity, not a luxury.

    ✔ Expanding access to affordable coverage

    ✔ Lowering prescription drug costs

    ✔ Protecting rural hospitals

    ✔ Strengthening mental health services

    ✔ Healthcare should not bankrupt families.

  • ✔ Voting rights and equal citizenship not second-class citizens.

    ✔ Protect voting rights

    ✔ Defend equal protection under the law

    ✔ Oppose efforts to strip lawful citizens of rights

    ✔ Safeguard individual freedoms

    ✔ Rights should not depend on party labels.

  • Veterans Affairs: Accountability and Real Access to Care

    A policy position from Hanu Karlapalem, Democratic candidate for Alabama House District 4

    Overview

    Alabama is home to more than 400,000 veterans, including tens of thousands across Limestone, Morgan, and Madison counties. Honoring their service means more than ceremonies and monuments — it means an accountable state agency and real access to care close to home. Right now, Alabama falls short on both.

    The Problem

    Accountability at ADVA

    In October 2024, the State Board of Veterans Affairs — the veteran representatives statutorily responsible for overseeing the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs (ADVA) — voted to retain then-Commissioner Kent Davis for the remainder of the year. Less than an hour later, Governor Ivey overrode that vote and fired him anyway, citing what her office called the governor's “supreme executive power.” The dispute traced back to Davis's push to direct federal ARPA funds and opioid-settlement dollars toward veteran mental health treatment grants, and to an ethics complaint he had filed against a member of the governor's cabinet.

    Source: reporting on the October 2024 State Board of Veterans Affairs vote, Governor Ivey's override, and the underlying ARPA/mental-health funding dispute (AL.com; Alabama Reflector; Alabama Political Reporter, June 2025).

    In March 2025, the legislature passed Senate Bill 67 (SB67), which restructured the agency: the commissioner became a governor-appointed, cabinet-level position, and the State Board of Veterans Affairs — the same board that had just voted to keep its own commissioner — was reduced to an advisory role. The bill, carried by Sen. Andrew Jones and Rep. Ed Oliver, was fiercely contested when first introduced — at one hearing, nine veterans spoke against it and none spoke in favor. After months of amendments addressing veterans' concerns about board composition, the final version won the endorsement of the VFW, American Legion, and AMVETS. Even so, the dispute that produced this bill started with a governor overriding veterans' own board on a personnel decision — and that's the deeper problem this proposal is meant to address, regardless of how the resulting legislation was ultimately received.

    Source: Alabama Political Reporter and Alabama Reflector coverage of the 2025 ADVA restructuring.

    Davis later sued Governor Ivey over his removal. In September 2026, a federal judge ruled that Davis's core due-process claim — that the pre-termination hearing was a sham because Ivey had already decided to fire him — should proceed in Alabama state court rather than federal court, since state courts have the authority to order a new, fair hearing. Several other claims, including monetary damages against Ivey personally, were dismissed on sovereign immunity grounds. Whatever the legal outcome, the episode illustrates how much authority over veterans' care now sits with the governor's office rather than with veterans' own elected representatives on the board.

    What Veterans in HD4 Are Experiencing

    Talk to any veteran in HD4 and you'll hear a version of the same story: appointments that take months to schedule, confusion about what's covered, having to switch doctors mid-treatment because a provider stopped accepting VA coverage. The staff at the Huntsville VA clinic are good people, but they're stretched thin — and some of their own doctors have started recommending veterans seek care outside the VA system entirely just to be seen in time.

    That's the federal VA, not ADVA — a different agency, a different fight. But it's exactly why ADVA's role matters. The state agency exists to help veterans navigate that maze: file claims, find community-care providers who actually take VA coverage, get answers when the federal system stalls.

    It's telling that even close advisors to this campaign — veterans and veteran advocates themselves — don't have full visibility into how ADVA performs day to day. That's not because they aren't paying attention. It's because the agency doesn't make that information easy to find.

    A Care Gap in North Alabama

    That same fight over veteran mental health funding is directly tied to the care gap that follows. Alabama already has more than one model that works: Operation VETS ("The Shoulder") in Mobile and Spanish Fort, Vets Recover — a veteran-founded continuum of care now led by CEO Kent Davis, the former ADVA commissioner himself — also in Mobile, and Client Care Continuum, a residential PTSD and dual-diagnosis facility for military personnel in Arley. None of the three operates anywhere near North Alabama.

    Meanwhile, the behavioral health providers that do serve Madison, Limestone, and Morgan counties are overwhelmingly private-equity or corporate-owned, general-population facilities — not veteran-specific care. Bradford Health Services (Madison and Huntsville) is owned by Lee Equity Partners, a New York private equity firm. Pathway Healthcare (Huntsville and Athens) is owned by Garden City Equity. Unity Psychiatric Care, a 20-bed Huntsville psychiatric hospital, is a division of Tennessee-based American Health Partners. Alabama's Certificate of Need law — which requires state approval before new facilities or treatment beds can open — makes it harder for a veteran-specific alternative to break into a market these providers already dominate.

    What does exist for veterans in North Alabama: the Birmingham VA's outpatient clinic in Huntsville, the Floyd E. "Tut" Fann State Veterans Home (one of five ADVA oversees statewide), general mental health infrastructure through the Mental Health Center of North Central Alabama, and a Veterans' Outreach office in Hartselle limited to claims and benefits navigation — not clinical treatment. None of this is a substitute for a dedicated, veteran-specific treatment option.

    Source: Alabama Department of Mental Health program listings; Bradford Health Services and Birmingham VA Medical Center service area information; va.alabama.gov state veterans homes directory.

    Federal Delegation & the Missed VA Hospital

    In 2022, the VA's own Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) recommended building a new, full-service VA medical center in Huntsville — a real chance at the hospital North Alabama veterans have gone without for decades. That plan died a few months later, in June 2022, when a bipartisan group of ten U.S. senators — none from Alabama — announced they would block Senate confirmation of the AIR Commission nominees, halting the entire review process before it could hold a single hearing. Then-Senators Richard Shelby and Tommy Tuberville did not join that group, but there is also no public record of them opposing the block or pushing to revive the Huntsville recommendation through any other channel in the years since. North Alabama veterans are still waiting for the hospital the VA itself said they should have.

    The Ask

    1. Repeal SB67 and restore the State Board of Veterans Affairs' decision-making authority — including its say over ADVA leadership — so a board of veterans representing every branch and region can't be overridden by the governor's office alone.

    2. Require ADVA to publicly report VSO claims turnaround times by county, so families can see whether the state is keeping up.

    3. Study extending a program modeled on Operation VETS to North Alabama, where thousands of veterans currently have no veteran-specific treatment option within reasonable driving distance.

    4. Review and reform Alabama's Certificate of Need process as it applies to veteran-specific treatment facilities, so that expanding access in underserved regions isn't blocked by rules designed to protect existing providers. and local monopolies.

    Where I Stand

    Alabama's veterans didn't serve so the state could get away with symbolism. A cemetery honors a promise kept at the end of life — but the same seriousness has to apply while veterans are still here, navigating claims, seeking treatment, and depending on a state agency that answers to them, not just to whoever appointed it.