Alaska Is Still Waiting to Get its First State-Run Veterans Cemetery. A Backlog Stands in its Way.

Alaska has more veterans as a percentage of its population than any other state but has yet to land the funding it has been requesting to build its first veterans cemetery -- much to the frustration of some residents and Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan.

Sullivan vented over the Department of Veterans Affairs' repeated failure to grant the state's request for funding for its first-ever state-run veterans' cemetery during a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing Feb. 28.

"The majority of the state, a state with more veterans per capita than any other state," Sullivan said during the hearing, "and we actually don't have a [state-run] veterans' cemetery. ... We keep missing the cutoff."