BRISTOL –– The Rhode Island Veterans Home, sharply criticized in a recent report for past management practices that intimidated some of its residents and alienated their families, has turned a corner.

That was the message from the Governor’s Advisory Council on Veterans Affairs, which met yesterday to discuss the recent release of a caustic report by the Special House Commission to Study Potential Administrative and Functional Improvements to the veterans home.

All agreed with a commission recommendation that the state build a new veterans home, but members of the advisory council took issue with the report’s characterization of the complex as “dilapidated.” One member said “old and tired” is more like it.

In many respects, the emotional climate that gave rise to the special commission’s investigation no longer exist at the veterans’ home, by all accounts.

In August 2007, the state Department of Human Services replaced the longtime administrator, David Kirchner, with an interim director, William Camara.

Camara, now acting deputy director of the DHS, turned over day-to-day operations to a new permanent administrator, retired Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus, in August of this year.

The special commission, which released its report a couple of weeks ago, applauded the appointment of Baccus, who said yesterday that the veterans home has been “moving forward” with changes recommended by the study panel for more than a year.

Raymond Benkowsky, chairman of the governor’s advisory council, disputed the commission’s description of a “hostile and antagonistic” treatment of families by veterans home officials.

He likened the commission’s proceedings to a “witch hunt.”

“It creates the impression that vets don’t receive good medical care,” Benkowsky said, when “quite the opposite” is true.

The way the commission conducted business was “one-sided,” he said. Comments of former nursing director Jan Markoff were not recorded in the commission’s minutes, he said.

But state Rep. Raymond E. Gallison Jr., a Bristol Democrat, said the commission was formed in response to a persistent undercurrent of complaints about the veterans home.

People stopped him at church and in the supermarket, Gallison said.

One person told him that a resident who had challenged the administration was “brought into a room and told, ‘If you don’t like it, leave,’ ” Gallison said.

And he noted that the Department of Human Services refused to give the commission a report it had requested.

“That is wrong,” Gallison said.

Adelita Orefice, deputy secretary of the state’s Office of Health & Human Services, told Gallison that “we are all about sharing information.

“We don’t tolerate hiding things,” she said, taking pains to note that the administration of the DHS, as well as the veterans home, has changed during the last year.

Camara said that since he took over as interim administrator, a new collaboration between the home residents’ doctors and the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy has saved about $250,000 on prescription medication.

Just this week, the veterans home opened a café that employs some residents, he said.

And Baccus said policies are being rewritten.

gmacris@projo.com