Representative Brit McKenzie

Meeting — April 2, 2025 (2:13:13)

Whenever we sat down or the legislature sat down 10 years ago to work on this legislation and create these distinctions in the license, it was, I believe, based on the conversations I had, this was intended for us to continue to grow so that we have the opportunity to have our local constituents who work in an industry that benefits our communities have more opportunity to sell their products to our constituents. With that, I'd be happy to take any

Meeting — April 2, 2025 (2:12:41)

What you can often see with a tap room is for a restaurant that does not have a license to serve either beer, wine, or mixed drinks, they can go and partner with a local brewery and have that tap room be a part of their restaurant so that you have, in essence, the existing license and that, a local product, in a local restaurant. To that end, I lost my place, I lost my place, here I am. This is, like I said, an outgrowth of success.

Meeting — April 2, 2025 (2:12:11)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is a very simple bill. What it does is currently in code, we have our small brewery license allows for two tap rooms for every single license holder. As an outgrowth of the success of the small brewery license and small brewery independent brewers of Arkansas, we've had a bunch of, specifically the region that I represent, the broader region around me, ask for an additional tap room, the ability to have additional tap room as a part of their license. I want to be very clear, this does not mean the opening of another bar or in essence another bar.

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (57:39)

Your constituents will see the benefit from this, so I'd

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (57:34)

know this was like very riveting and it kept you at the edges of your seats, but this is going to be good.

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (57:06)

You know, I'm not going to say they're in favor of it, but they are neutral on the bill in that they are currently in the process of evaluating their contracts with some of these companies anyway.

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (56:34)

Doing work with the government is particular, and that's why a lot of the larger processors and banks try to avoid it, because of the laws that we pass on them in terms of requirements, IPP, data termination, stuff like that, or sorry, PII and data termination. So the current incumbent believes that they can compete in the world because they've been doing it from a seat of incumbency for 30-ish years. So to my knowledge, you know, and I've talked to the Secretary of State, they're one of the larger contracts.

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (56:18)

to our state agencies would be opposed. I met with them yesterday, and they were supportive of it. They believe, because this is niche. This isn't like Visa or MasterCard can swoop into Arkansas and give us a better rate on all of it and move on with our day.

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (56:13)

would think that the network administrator who has a large percentage, over 50 of the services

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (55:32)

But it's, as you can probably attest, there's no volume there. There's nothing behind it. It doesn't go in so far as to say, did we even think about recruiting a third party or a white label service to promote an efficiency? It just says, hey, it's 3% plus $1 for this one county for this revenue office. Yeah. All right. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Yeah. Representative Collins.

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (55:00)

the Information Network Act of 1995, but we worked, TSS helped write this bill. Sorry, I don't know what they're called now, but they helped write the bill so that it was in concert because there is a title transfer of current appropriation. There's a million dollars that we all appropriate to INA each year for the purposes of that contract and enticements to state agencies to be a part of Tyler. So, and the reason I actually really know about this is because as an alternate for two terms now on communications, we get a quarterly report of updates on the transaction fees.

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (54:57)

are. Initially, this bill was a repeal of

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (54:26)

It's dense. I understand that, but I'd be happy to take any questions. Representative

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (53:55)

in a fluid way has become much more efficient, and they're larger clearinghouses now. So we have the opportunity to really do something great here, which is promote transparency through putting contracts as they start to go out to build out services within our state government, go through the standard procurement process, and then hopefully, and again, through competition breeds excellence, put these contracts through that procurement process so ultimately we can drive down that processing payment fee on our constituents and we all have a little bit more money in our pocket.

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (53:24)

that took place in fiscal year 2024. $7.3 million were collected in credit card fees. So this isn't an insignificant amount of money. And none of these contracts were used to compete against one another. They're pretty standard, and there's a large national debate going on about exchange fees in that the market standard of 3% actually incorporates about 80% of profit. Because the ability for banks and independent processors to make these transactions happen

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (52:53)

What this will do is this will put things back to the way things are supposed to be. Promote legislative oversight so that we can, in the interim through Council, promote transparency in the procurement process as individual agencies come to us for requests or supplemental appropriation requests or contract approvals or claims relevant to information technology services. And I'm really passionate about this because I've spent a lot of time working on it. But just to add some significance, there were 1.7 million transactions, credit card transactions

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (52:23)

The Secretary of State is technically the chairman of this board, as well as, I believe, the director of the business division, the Secretary of State, has a prescribed seat on the board. So, without updating that board, it really isn't a true reflection of the constituencies within state government that use them best, as well as associations that may not have as much sway or influence or significance in how we judge the Internet. So let me be quick about this.

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (51:49)

I believe this is really, this promotes a little bit, a lot of transparency. So what the bill does, it will abolish the Information Network of Arkansas board. That board is, just in my humble and my humble opinion, is outmoded. It has prescriptive board members from associations that I believe were really relevant in 1995 that thought it would be important for these entities to be, you know, close to this new thing called the Internet, members of the Bar Association, the State Library Board, independent insurers.

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (51:19)

So anytime that we can promote transparency and promote competition, it's going to be the benefit of our constituents. The second is it's going to help promote, like I mentioned previously, a standard procurement process through the Office of State Procurement so that any new bid that comes through, any new website, any new widget, any new data collection that takes place has to get the same level of attention and scrutiny that the Department of Education would for a service contract or DHS would for any type of a provider or insurer.

State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs (House) — April 2, 2025 (50:44)

There is not a standard RFP process. There is not a two-bucket, five-point procurement board that's impaneled or RFP members that are brought to help on an objective basis evaluate contracts for the purpose of competition. So why this eliminates junk fees, and that's a very lofty term, I understand that, but it does it in two parts. This is not sexy. This is not really going to be an awesome boon for general revenue. These are fees that our taxpayers and our constituents face directly out of their pocket and into the pocket of a service provider.