A plan to establish a veterans nursing home in Bowling Green is gaining new momentum in the wake of a recent setback.

State Reps. Michael Meredith, R-Brownsville, and Jim DeCesare, R-Bowling Green, are sponsoring legislation that includes funding for the 90-bed nursing home. Their bill will go before the General Assembly in 2017.

For Ray Biggerstaff, a veterans advocate who’s been working on the project for three years, the nursing home is about going beyond just giving lip service to veterans issues.

“I fully believe that the veterans in the commonwealth of Kentucky deserve and should have the unconditional support from our state legislature,” he said. “This time we just have to be very careful with the process.”

Cora Jane Spiller spoke for her husband, retired Col. Robert Spiller, who’s also supported the effort. He was unavailable for direct comment.

“We really need that facility here,” she said. “We have over 40,000 veterans in the area who could avail themselves of this privilege.”

The bill would commit $10.5 million in state money to match $20 million coming from the federal government.

Supporters were unable to get funding for the project placed in the final state budget during the last legislative session.

At the time, DeCesare told the Daily News that Democratic leaders – except House Speaker Pro Tem Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green – failed to support the proposal. Richards at the time said there was an effort to gain support, calling the failure “the biggest disappointment in the budget.”

In the end, the votes needed to gain support for the project weren’t there. Because of that, Biggerstaff said the effort will have to proceed carefully but that the campaign will succeed “come hell or high water.”

DeCesare agreed and said he feels confident the bill could pass.

“We’re not gonna let politics get in the way,” he said. “We’re gonna keep fighting for the veterans of southcentral Kentucky.”

The project is on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ list of priority projects. However, it cannot move forward unless the state contributes.

“We think we have the votes to pass it; we just got to get it done again,” DeCesare said.

Meredith, the bill’s main sponsor, said the nursing home would help alleviate long travel times for family members to the nearest similar nursing homes in Hanson and Radcliff.

Meredith said sponsoring the legislation is about providing “good services close to home so that veterans and their families can visit with each other and not have be taken out of the communities that they’ve spent their lives in.”

— Follow reporter Aaron Mudd on Twitter @aaron_muddbgdn or visit bgdailynews.com.