House State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs Committee
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Speaker 1
0:00
Before a resolution has appeared on the committee agenda and has been called up for consideration and the sponsor is not present, the item is going to be placed at the bottom of the active calendar. So if you have a bill, you're going to want to do that. As a side note, one thing you all need to realize, especially the freshmen, if you're going to run a bill, it really behooves you to get a Senate sponsor prior to filing the bill and make sure you have someone on the other end of the Capitol to help you work through that.
We're going to have some special order of businesses, I'm sure, come up, and that's set at the call of the co-chairman, and we'll give you notice about that, and it will be on your agenda. At this time, I'm not going to go through. Does everyone in the room know each other? Have you all met each other? I was not planning on going through and having everyone reintroduce themselves and tell their favorite breakfast cereal or whatever. I was just going to move right into business, if that's okay.
Right now, I'd like a presentation. If you'll pay attention, at the end of the table, you'll see our ArcLeg page, and he's going to go over the basics of the ArcLeg page.
Speaker 3
1:11
Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to
Jim Schratz
Unverified
1:17
just— Please tell everyone who you are. Please excuse me. My name is Jim Schratz. I'm the Chief Information Officer for the Bureau of Legislative Research, and for all intents and purposes, the Chief Information Officer for both the House and the Senate as well. responsible for all of the programming all the programs all the computers most
of the technology stuff that happens in either the chambers or in the committee rooms is under falls under my office and our job is to be here to try to help you do what you need to do legislative so wanted to walk through today some some of the major points on the website to allow you to see what's going on resolution problem here
Speaker 10
2:06
yeah look fine to me what I want to do is
Speaker 16
2:27
first of all since we are in state agencies one of the first things on it well to begin with
Jim Schratz
Unverified
2:36
let's look on the main page of the arc
leg website is every day when you hit this you will see first all of the list of all of today's meetings they're listed by the time and if there is an agenda published it is over here on the right side if you click on the agenda itself it will take you to that appropriate agenda and actually let me I just I clicked on the wrong one there you click on the house of state agencies that's where we are
and this will show you that this is indeed the agenda for the state agencies committee list the members and then it'll list any bills resolutions or special orders of business that you have for the committee for this day that is a PDF document it is also live it's got hyperlinks here on it where you click on that and it will actually take you pull the document up for you to see it in the in the window. I actually have not a
Speaker 17
3:44
nice, fast house computer, but an old computer.
Speaker 1
3:49
One of the reasons I've asked Mr. Schratz to show this to us is because a lot of information is on this site. If you want to find out any information, it'll be showing you here shortly about any state agency, their budget, their mission. I mean, all of that is on the Arc Lake site, not only for you guys
Speaker 21
4:05
to be able to, but also for our constituents to be able to look it up as well.
Jim Schratz
Unverified
4:13
Right. So back on the main page here, if you want to look at one of the agencies, say there's somebody coming, one of the agencies coming up before y'all that's got a bill that you
want to look at information about them, if you come over on the right-hand side under useful links, under the 2012 ALC JBC budget hearings is a list of the budget requests, manuals and physical publications a list of the hearing calendars and the schedule so if you want to go in and find somebody's an agency's budget you can actually click over here and this will bring you to a list of the different volumes and if you know what you know say it's a border
commission you would go to volume three if it's dfna state police crime lab or any of these others listed here you would go to volume four and if you clicked on that it will actually open the entire volume of budget information and this information
Speaker 3
5:14
is available not only to you but to the entire public this is a public website all this information is available to everyone excuse
Speaker 1
5:24
me just a minute representative altus did you have a question at this time
Representative Denny Altes
Unverified
5:29
Is that what the hand raised was? Thank you, Madam Chair. I know that we're trying to save money. I know we kill small forests every session, but I have so much energy in my body that when I get close to a computerized device, it just totally destroys it. So could we at least have one piece of paper on our desk that's the agenda?
Speaker 1
5:59
i i have no problem with that sure thank you very sure and and just so you know where i'm going with wanting people to be able to navigate the site is so they can get all this information before they get to the the committee meeting so they can be reading through bills so they can know now that we've passed the house rule that a bill sits for two days you have plenty of time to be be reading bills prior to coming to a committee thank you thank you so I
Jim Schratz
Unverified
6:29
clicked on volume forward this is a list and it over here in the left-hand side it shows you the entire table of contents for this volume you can come down here and choose any of the agencies listed here DF&A management services if you clicked on that it would give you the history of the organization as well as it's enabling legislation and other information about it it'll give you flow charts about how the agency operates and then commentaries by the agency audit findings any other sort of information as well as as you continue to scroll
down through this it'll have all the budgetary information for that agency so that information is available again not only to yourselves but to any anybody that wants to go to the website as well as the budget information excuse me just a minute representative
Speaker 34
7:24
hickerson yes thank you madam chairman you
Speaker 35
7:26
can access all of this on what the arc leg yes ma'am yes ma'am so
Jim Schratz
Unverified
7:34
another very useful link and i thought we had this on the main page but if you go if you were
looking at the left hand navigation which shows you home legislative doors committees acts bills and resolutions if you click on the committees link it's going to show you a page that's got the joint committees house committee senate committees and task force I'm going to click on the house committees scroll down to state agencies and governmental affairs house and that's going to take you to the home page of the state agencies committee it's got a statutory our house rules comment about what the function of this agency is on the right
hand side it has links committee information roster any subcommittees upcoming meetings past meetings bills referred to committee this link will show you all the bills that have been referred to the committee from the beginning of the session to the present so we click on that it's going to show you in descending order from the most current to the past January 14 to joint resolution and a bill were referred on the 17th a joint resolution and then on
January 22nd the joint resolution and two bills were referred so it will show you that on this page that's a hyperlink to the bill itself it also will take you to the sponsors page and each member has their own page and if you go to that page I'm going to use Senator Altus for our test here I click on that it's going to take you to his page but below that if you scroll down it'll show you a list of all the bills that he's filed so this is there for all of you as well each one
of you has your own page that has all this information about it and it's got a link to the bill it's also got a link to the history go back so bill the member here's the subtitle and the status of the document so if we click on the history here it's going to take you and show you the full history of that bill the day it was filed and whatever what all's happened to it since it's been filed and as we go through the process that may have anywhere from two
or three actions if it's gotten bogged down or it may have up to 20 if it's gone through the entire process and been enrolled and actually signed by the governor so that's a very useful thing to know but again this agencies this page is every committee has its page for bills referred it also shows any ISPs that are referred also the documents or reports that have been issued by the the committee itself. And all of this information is pertinent for the current biennium.
Speaker 37
10:29
Members, one of the reasons I wanted to really encourage you to familiarize yourself with this
Speaker 1
10:34
page, and especially freshmen, when I was a freshman, I had the good fortune of sitting down one-on-one with a member of the IT staff who went over and really trained me on the page. I recommend they're open to doing that at any time. You call them over a BLR, and they'll do that. If you have a Twitter or Facebook page, when you're communicating with constituents, I refer them to this page often. It has, I mean, as you go up to the
top of the page, you see it's got all the current audits. It's got all the BLR information publications. Everything is on this page. It links to this page. It's excellent, and I highly recommend when you're speaking with your groups back home to encourage them to to this page as well and and familiarize themselves with everything and if you go back if we go
Jim Schratz
Unverified
11:22
back i'm going to click back to the main architect page one of the i think one of the more fascinating functions that we put on here under bills and resolutions of course you can search all the
bills you can search a range of bills this recent activities button is very useful especially as you get into the session and both chambers are having long calendars if you've got a bill in the opposing chamber that you're trying to figure out when it's going to come up if you click on this recent activities button it's going to show you all the activity that's happening in either chamber real-time so it's going to show you as as the status clerk is up there
keying stuff into the into the computer at the front desk that information is being transferred to this page here so you can see where basically where they are on their calendar or where if you've been outside of the chamber and walked in you could just you could click on this and see where you are in your own chamber see what are the bills have been gone through but it's a very fast quick place to look to see and again if you're watching the other chamber for certain bill you can see if they've gotten close to it by their calendar and
Speaker 1
12:37
And if, like Representative Altus, you really prefer paper, you can print it out, you know, when you're on the House floor, you can print it out in advance and study it that way. I mean, we really have the benefit of having this information far ahead of the committee meeting,
Speaker 19
12:52
so we'll know what bills are coming through
Speaker 43
12:56
here. Representative Dotson. Thank you, Madam Chair. Question. I've noticed in some of the committee meetings on the tablets that are in front of us here to the left, there's the agenda drop downs on the some of the drop downs like some of the
additional pages like fiscal impact studies and things like that where do you find that on the Arc Lake website I have on the agenda I can find the bills I'm trying to think of a
Speaker 22
13:25
bill that's got, I know that's got, which one?
Jim Schratz
Unverified
13:31
House Bill 1015, all right. Up at the very top, there's a quick link to bills. I'm going to do that. House Bill 1015.
yes that's going to take me to the bill page and if you scroll down a little bit it's going to give you a history down here underneath that it's going to show you any amendments or fiscal impacts on that document for that bill up here in the upper right it also shows any meetings for which that our agendas that that is currently on so it's showing that on the 23rd today that is on members own and it's scheduled for house
education tomorrow and it's got one fiscal impact down here it's got one house amendment and you can actually click on on that document here to see the amendment and this is the same for all bills for which things have been filed and again that that's from the top of the page the bill detail that's a very quick link for any any bills resolutions or anything you can also look at acts once
Speaker 1
14:50
they start appearing okay is that is that helpful I highly recommend everyone familiarize them yourself with all the information on this page and spread the word to your constituents they'll appreciate it because they can look up especially those that are somewhat computer savvy can look up and get all the information
Jim Schratz
Unverified
15:11
that to reiterate what representative Lee said that my staff is more than happy to sit with you one on one Lori and Roy are stationed down there in the house full time for the
session they're basically devoted to y'all and anything you need they will be more than happy to sit down and step through this stuff with you that's part of what they do they love doing
Speaker 10
15:31
it so please ask it if you need that or want that thank you very much in
Speaker 1
15:37
our who is going to be going through our tablet information will that be you I'm gonna let the
Jim Schratz
Unverified
15:42
young man that program that do it okay he hates being in the spotlight
Speaker 50
15:46
but I'm gonna make him do this good for him we're gonna do a short primer on the tablets yes just about this you might
Speaker 19
15:54
want to scoot away from yours as we do this, or anyone else's maybe? You
Speaker 1
16:00
have three in front of you and none of them work. Oh, goodness gracious. Okay.
Speaker 54
16:24
Good morning, members. It's a privilege to be here in front of you.
Speaker 56
16:32
I did write the program that you see in front of you. I had some help, but together we worked together on this. If you see what's in front of you, on the left-hand side of the screen, you'll see there's a tab that says view, and underneath that has the committee name, which is state agencies, and underneath that each agenda and then bill will show up underneath that and if the bill
has an amendment or a fiscal impact it will show up underneath the bill itself and in order to open an agenda or a bill or anything like that you just tap on it and it should show up over here to the right in the PDF reading pane. So anything that you click over here on the left should appear as the bill or amendment or whatever you click on should appear on the right. Up at the top up here, there are a few buttons that you may notice.
The first two are tree panel, and what that means is if you click on the left arrow, you'll see that that navigation panel on the left just disappeared, and what that'll do is that'll give your reading pane a little more view so you can see a little more screen there. if you click on the right arrow right next to it, that navigation pane will come back. So that gives you just a little more space if you need a little more space to read. Also the next two buttons you see are font size buttons and what these two do is if you
click on the plus, notice that the navigation pane, the font size on the navigation pane actually increases. So if you do need it a little bigger for you, you can click on it and get it up to a good size. And right next to it is the decrease font size button. So if you get it a little too big, you can decrease it. The next button beside it is the status button, and that should just be green. Did it? No, ma'am, it's showing green.
Am I not speaking loud enough, high enough? Anything changed? Oh, okay. I guess I was just carrying along, didn't notice. You know the technology, it's never dependent on technology. Hello, test, test, there we go. Is that better? Can everybody hear me now? Okay, I'm not sure where I stopped at.
The status? Okay. Right next to the font size button is the status button, and really that should just be green all the time. That's just an indicator that the program is up and functioning correctly. So if you click on it, it won't do anything. Don't expect anything from it. It's just if that's not green, you might want to let the committee staff know. Other than that, if you have a PDF up and open, if you hover down towards the bottom of the PDF,
probably about an inch from the bottom if you hover your stylus over it you'll see like a little gray bar that'll appear and inside that gray bar you have plus and minus just like the font size where you can actually increase the PDF size font and that like I said that's if you hover towards the bottom it's about an inch off the bottom and for those of
Speaker 19
20:06
you that might hang on two seconds representative
Representative Nate Bell
Unverified
20:10
bill thank you madam chair just a question
related to access our leg site can it be accessed on these tablets I was told at one
Speaker 69
20:21
time that I thought we could but is that I believe that should be the only site
Representative Nate Bell
Unverified
20:27
that should should be available yes how do we access that site on these tablets I thought we were
Speaker 69
20:36
shown that in orientation but I can't seem to make it work today so I know that
Speaker 18
20:45
this is really new to all of us especially those of us
Speaker 1
20:49
that have been here and the decision to go with tablets was made by a previous administration we're doing the best we can and let's just all try and embrace it which is why I thought if we had primers it might be helpful not quite
Speaker 56
21:06
what I meant representative Hickerson but close yes if you want the arc leg website you can click on the minimize button on the iris program that you currently have open and click on the ie icon in the bottom left hand corner of
the screen and you'll have to type out www.arcleg.state.ar.us it might be good to have like a shortcut on the desktop that'll be noted for later but you should be able to bring up the ArcLeg website on the tablets yes yeah
Speaker 21
21:36
I think that would be good if you could program them so it would be on the desktop so we can just tap on it thank you
Speaker 69
21:46
yeah well we'll put that in our notes other than that does anybody have any questions comments concerns any questions comments
Speaker 39
21:56
concerns thank you very much thank you appreciate
Speaker 1
22:02
it a couple other things we have some dates and deadlines you all need to know about January 28th we're going to be handing this out January 28th is the deadline to file all retirement legislation and some health care legislation the 13th of February is your deadline to file constitutional amendments March 4th is your deadline to
file appropriation bills and of course March 11th is the deadline to file any legislation we're passing that calendar out right now we're also going to hand out a sheet that goes over basic committee proceedings so everyone can have their own cheat sheet as we go through this they'll be handing that out as well.
Speaker 78
23:10
Representative Klemmer. I ask this with a little trepidation. I think this is, this handout is, both
Speaker 80
23:19
these handouts are fairly helpful, but since we're going paperless, can we get those on here? On our, I mean, again, I hate to ask too much. Since we're going paperless, they can be emailed to
Speaker 80
23:39
not going to be handy reference on the tab, on the tablet.
I mean that's we'll work on that it's it's not here
Speaker 37
23:47
that's a legitimate question thank you we'll work on that if there are no further questions about technology and then we're going to go to
Speaker 1
23:58
the only thing other thing we have on our calendar which is a resolution from representative Womack if you would like to come to the end of the table everyone would give him their attention thank you
there is an amendment if I'm not mistaken representative Womack so we'll hand that out at this time
Speaker 19
24:43
Representative Nichols, she's right behind you. You were sitting next to Representative Altus, weren't you?
Speaker 18
25:43
Representative Womack, would you please present your amendment? Yes,
Speaker 86
26:03
ma'am. I don't have a copy of that here, but it is simply a list of— Ms. Thomas will bring it to you. Thank you, ma'am. It's a list of names.
Do I need to read them that would like to also be co-sponsors
Speaker 1
26:18
on this resolution? No, it's pretty self-explanatory. So basically the amendment is nothing but adding co-sponsors. Yes, ma'am. Okay. I'll need a motion to accept the amendment. Thank you. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Thank you.
Speaker 88
26:39
You can proceed with presenting your resolution. Okay, thank you. This resolution is in response
Speaker 86
26:45
to a tremendous amount of constituent contact via letters,
emails, phone calls concerning the recent hubbub over our Second Amendment rights and all the things that have been in the news lately on the federal level. I just had an overwhelming number of contacts, and as I discussed that with a few of my colleagues on the House floor, I found out that that seemed to be the case statewide. So I started looking at what we could do immediately to calm some of our constituents' fears and let them know that we heard what they're asking for and that we will go to work on it and that we are doing what we can do.
And this was the quickest way that we could get our message back to the constituents, that we hear their message and we're working for them. Do
Speaker 89
27:35
any of the members have any questions? Representative Bell? Not a question,
Speaker 1
27:40
Madam Chair. just a motion at the proper time if there are no questions then i'll accept that motion please excuse me hang on i'm supposed to go to the audience did anyone sign up to speak for or
against this now is the proper time representative bill
Representative Nate Bell
Unverified
27:56
thank you madam chair move do pass as amended
Speaker 19
28:01
Thank you. All in favor, aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Congratulations, Representative Womack. Your resolution passes. Thank you,
Speaker 1
28:12
Madam Chair and Committee. If there are no further questions, I'll accept a motion to adjourn. All those in favor? All those opposed? Thank you.
Agenda
HR1003
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Speaker 1
Speaker 3
Jim Schratz
Unverified
Speaker 10
Speaker 16
Speaker 17
Speaker 21
Representative Denny Altes
Unverified
Speaker 34
Speaker 35
Speaker 37
Speaker 19
Speaker 43
Speaker 22
Speaker 38
Speaker 50
Speaker 54
Speaker 56
Representative Nate Bell
Unverified
Speaker 69
Speaker 18
Speaker 39
Speaker 78
Speaker 80
Speaker 86
Speaker 88
Speaker 89