Oregon Gov. Kate Brown took on her own Department of Corrections recently, and veterans won. In doing so she not only saved a small group of veterans a bit of money but made it clear to DOC that the law means what it says it does.

The 2017 Legislature approved, and Brown signed, Senate Bill 844, which gave the department the right to collect a portion of inmates’ bank accounts. The department was to use 5 percent of each account to create a transition fund available to the inmate upon release. Another 10 percent was to go to pay court-ordered fines, attorney fees and the like. Off limits, the Legislature said, were federal disability benefits paid to incarcerated veterans, Native American tribal payments and railroad retirement benefits. The veterans’ disability and railroad retirement benefits are protected from garnishment for debt by federal law.

Still, there are good reasons for the Oregon law. Convicted criminals were responsible for almost half of the state’s uncollected debt the year the measure was passed, and that wasn’t unusual. Too, the bill was sold as a way to hold convicts accountable for their actions and to ensure they had a bit of money available when they got out of prison.

DOC officials decided to work around the carve-outs, however. Lawyers who work with veterans involved with the justice system found out about it and objected. The state Department of Justice rejected their objections.

This summer, veterans’ advocate and lawyer Jesse Barton took up the cause. DOC refused to look into it, and Barton took the matter to Brown. She told her staff to get involved, it did so, and now DOC has decided not to garnish veterans’ disability funds.

It may seem like a small thing, protecting federal payments to the fewer than 2,000 veterans in Oregon prisons, but it was a worthy cause, nonetheless. Veterans on disability for problems caused during their service, even those in prison, deserve protection of their benefits. Brown understood that and ensured the Department of Corrections did, too.