This bill directs the Department of Veterans Affairs to designate the multispecialty clinic at 1263 Cobb Parkway NW, Marietta, Georgia, as the “Colonel Michael H. Boyce Department of Veterans Affairs Multispecialty Clinic” (also shortened in the text to the “Colonel Michael H.
Boyce VA Clinic”). It includes a preamble of findings recounting Colonel Boyce’s military service and civic contributions to Marietta and Cobb County.
On enactment the VA must treat any reference to the clinic in laws, regulations, maps, or other federal records as a reference to the new name. The measure contains no programmatic changes, appropriations, or operational directives for clinical services; its practical effects are administrative — updating signage, internal records, public-facing directories, and legal citations where the facility is named.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill assigns an official, commemorative name to a specific VA multispecialty clinic in Marietta and requires that all federal references to that facility be read as references to the new name. It contains findings summarizing Colonel Boyce’s biography and public service.
Who It Affects
Primary operational impact falls on the Department of Veterans Affairs (facility management, records, and communications teams), local government stakeholders in Cobb County, veteran service organizations using the clinic name in outreach, and any federal documents or programs that reference the clinic. Contractors who supply signage or update GIS/IT records will also be involved.
Why It Matters
Although ceremonial, the naming obliges multiple administrative updates across federal systems and third-party records; compliance officers and facilities managers should expect modest costs and coordination tasks. It also establishes a precedent for naming federal health facilities after local public figures without altering service or funding.
More articles like this one.
A weekly email with all the latest developments on this topic.
What This Bill Actually Does
The bill is short and narrowly focused. It contains a findings section that records Colonel Michael H.
Boyce’s military career, civic activities in Marietta and Cobb County, and his community work after retirement. Those findings provide the legislative rationale for the naming but do not create rights or benefits beyond the commemorative designation.
The operative provision directs the VA to call the multispecialty clinic at 1263 Cobb Parkway NW by the specific name set out in the bill and states that any reference to the clinic in any federal law, regulation, map, document, paper, or other record shall be considered to refer to the new name. Practically, that means VA must update internal directories, patient-facing locations pages, electronic health record facility identifiers where used, regulatory citations, and any signage under VA control.
State and local entities and private organizations that reference the clinic will not be legally forced to change their references, but federal documents will be treated as using the new name.The text does not change clinical operations, staffing, budget authority, or eligibility for services. It also does not include appropriations or instructions for funding signage, updating IT systems, or performing other administrative tasks; those responsibilities fall within the VA’s existing authorities and budget processes.
For compliance teams, the key tasks after enactment will be inventorying instances where the facility’s legal name appears, scheduling updates, and documenting the changes for records and external partners.Because the bill explicitly ties the new name to an exact street address, the designation remains attached to that physical location. If VA later relocates services or consolidates facilities, standard VA naming policy and any future legislative action would determine whether the name moves with the services or remains with the site.
The bill neither anticipates nor governs such contingencies.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Section 2 requires that the VA clinic at 1263 Cobb Parkway NW, Marietta, GA, carry the official name “Colonel Michael H. Boyce Department of Veterans Affairs Multispecialty Clinic.”, The bill states that any reference to that multispecialty clinic in laws, regulations, maps, documents, papers, or other U.S. records will be read as a reference to the new name.
Section 1 contains 11 findings summarizing Colonel Boyce’s birth, military service, local civic roles (including chairmanship of the Cobb County Board of Commissioners), volunteer activity, and date of death.
The measure does not authorize or appropriate funds; it is purely a naming/designation statute with no direct programmatic or budgetary changes.
The naming takes effect upon enactment — the statute ties the designation to the cited street address rather than to a programmatic entity, which matters if services or locations change later.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Findings summarizing Colonel Boyce’s service and community role
This section lists factual findings that Congress uses to justify the naming: Boyce’s birth date and place, education and commissioning, multiple Marine Corps assignments and deployments, roles in local charities and veteran organizations, his service as Cobb County Board chair, and his death in 2022. For practitioners, this is a legislative record: it explains Congress’s rationale but carries no operative legal effects beyond memorializing reasons for the honor.
Official name designation and scope of references
This is the operative provision. It prescribes the exact formal name for the clinic at the specified street address and includes a broad reference clause directing that any reference to the multispecialty clinic in any federal law, regulation, map, document, paper, or record should be treated as a reference to the new name. The clause ensures consistency across federal publications and legal materials — reducing ambiguity about how the facility should be cited in statutes or administrative rules going forward.
Standard enactment language
The bill closes with the standard enacting formula tying the change to the date of enactment. Practically, the clause means VA and other agencies should schedule updates to records and materials to occur after the statute becomes law; it also fixes the legal effect of the naming from that point forward.
This bill is one of many.
Codify tracks hundreds of bills on Veterans across all five countries.
Explore Veterans in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Local veterans who use the Marietta clinic — gain a named, locally recognized facility that can strengthen community outreach and veteran identification for services.
- Colonel Boyce’s family and local civic organizations — receive formal federal recognition of his service and civic contributions, which aids memorialization efforts and community heritage projects.
- Veteran service organizations and local governments — can leverage the named facility in outreach, fundraising, and coordination of veteran-specific programs tied to a recognizable local landmark.
Who Bears the Cost
- Department of Veterans Affairs facility and communications teams — must allocate staff time and possibly funds to update signage, websites, internal directories, IT identifiers, and printed materials.
- Federal agencies that publish maps or regulatory texts referencing the clinic — will need to update documents and digital records to reflect the new official name, a modest compliance task.
- Local vendors and contractors (signage, GIS, IT services) — may incur costs from contracts to manufacture and install new signs or update technical datasets, typically billed through VA procurement or local agreements.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central tension is between honoring a local military and civic leader through a federal naming (symbolic recognition valued by communities) and the practical, unfunded administrative obligations that the VA and partner organizations must absorb to implement and maintain that designation without altering service delivery or budgets.
The bill is a ceremonial, place-based designation with administrative ripple effects. The principal trade-off is symbolic recognition versus marginal implementation cost: the statute creates no programmatic benefit for veterans and does not allocate funds for the updates the name requires.
That creates an implementation gap — someone must pay for signage, IT updates, and record corrections, and the bill leaves that responsibility to existing VA processes and budgets.
Another practical tension involves the statute’s attachment of the name to a precise street address. Tying the designation to a location clarifies which facility is named today but can complicate matters if the VA reorganizes services or moves operations off-site.
The provision that all federal references be read as references to the new name reduces ambiguity within federal materials but does not compel non-federal entities to change references, potentially leaving parallel names in circulation. Finally, while the findings document the honoree’s background, they do not create enforceable rights or alter eligibility, leaving room for mistaken expectations among the public that the naming changed services or resources.
Try it yourself.
Ask a question in plain English, or pick a topic below. Results in seconds.