Does Corwin's appointment create a conflict of interest?

Can an employee of a Veteran’s Affairs (VA) clinic also serve as the director of a county’s veteran’s affairs commission? Joe Liddle of Dike says no, and he’s prepared to take his battle to court over the supervisors’ appointment of Mary Corwin to the Grundy County post.
           
Liddle, a retired and disabled Air Force veteran who served on active duty from 1980 to 1992, says that he has no personal axes to grind or hard feelings against Corwin, also of Dike and also a retired Air Force Reserve sergeant, and did not even know who she was until the two first crossed paths at the community’s Watermelon Days celebration in early August, where Corwin had set up a booth to meet with constituents and answer questions.
 
It was then that he first approached her, and as their conversation veered into Liddle asking her about a pair of recent controversies at the VA hospital in Iowa City (where a veteran committed suicide after being turned away for treatment, and it was revealed that over 1,200 veterans were assigned to “ghost panels” with doctors not actively providing care), Corwin allegedly responded that because she was employed as a part-time GS-5 with the VA Clinic in Waterloo, she could not comment on the matter. The exchange went sour as he accused Corwin of being on “the other team.”
 
In an interview with The Grundy Register, Liddle shared a story of his time in Des Moines working for the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) as chief financial officer and cited a handful of cases in Grundy, Tama and Black Hawk counties, including that of Charles Murphy of Dike, a veteran who passed away in 2014, as examples of the VA mistreating veterans and delaying or denying their claims for care and benefits.
 
“These are the things that really happen out here. This is why veterans are not zealously represented,” he said. 
 
Read more in this week's Grundy Register.