House Agriculture, Forestry & Economic Development Committee
Video
Transcript
Bills discussed (5)
| Bill | Title | Sponsor | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
|
SB940
· 3 mentions in chapter, transcript
Matched: “SB940”
|
Pre-2017 bill | ||
|
SB242
· 2 mentions in chapter, transcript
Matched: “SB242”
|
Pre-2017 bill | ||
|
SB849
· 2 mentions in chapter, transcript
Matched: “SB849”
|
Pre-2017 bill | ||
|
HB2055
· 1 mention in transcript
Matched: “…e or do something with this morning. First on our agenda is House Bill 2055 by Representative Patterson. I believe he still wants us to…”
|
Pre-2017 bill | ||
|
HB2166
· 1 mention in transcript
Matched: “…tterson. I believe he still wants us to pass over that. The House Bill 2166 by Representative Hobbs has been withdrawn. You can do medi…”
|
Pre-2017 bill |
Machine transcript
May contain errors. Verify important quotations against the official video.
About transcript accuracy
- Source
- Whisper
- Model
- ggml-large-v3-turbo.bin RTX5060
- Processing date
- October 5, 2026
Representative Jerry R. Brown
Unverified
0:00
A couple of bills that we're going to get out of here or do something with this morning. First on our agenda is House Bill 2055 by Representative Patterson. I believe he still wants us to pass over that. The House Bill 2166 by Representative Hobbs has been withdrawn. You can do medicines. I'm sorry.
Speaker 6
0:30
Now we have Senate Bill 242, Senator Madison, and I believe that Representative Edwards is going to run that bill. Senate Bill 242. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If you'd recognize yourself, you may begin, sir. Yes, sir,
Representative John Charles Edwards
Unverified
0:54
Representative John Edwards. This is a code
commission revision bill, and members, I think we've had some of these through here before.
There's an Arkansas Code Revision Commission where they make technical corrections to bills. This is one of those bills I unfortunately do the short straw, and I'm a member of this committee. This one deals with one of the agricultural titles, and thanks to my assistant, Scout Snowden, this morning, And you'll notice they've made the technical change of somatic cell count. I didn't know what a somatic cell count was, but it's a count that helps define the quality of milk.
That's all that it does. And as I always tell everyone, if the lawyers look at the last part of the section of this bill, page 2, line 5 to 11, that anything that we pass in any legislation this session that this conflicts with, this bill would be expressly repealed. So with that, I'd appreciate a good vote. Motion. Do you have a motion? All right. Do we have other questions about committee?
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
2:06
I do have one. Representative Linderman? John, I'm not trying to put you on the spot here, but reading this thing real quick, Representative Edwards, sorry. This is an incentive payment to get the milk counts below 400,000 somatic
Representative John Charles Edwards
Unverified
2:27
cell count. Is that what it is? This is an incentive payment? I have no idea about that. This legislation, though, doesn't change the program at all.
I think what it does, it clarifies what they're talking about. I mean, it's just for clarity, but as far as the program goes. And the good thing, though, it's always good to ask these questions about these technical corrections bills because every now and then there will be something in there you do have to watch. And as a good friend of mine said, particularly if you see someone trying to change something from an and to an or, but this is not one of those kinds of bills. It's just clarifying in the law how the count goes.
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
3:12
But about the program, I'm sorry. I do not know. That's an extremely low somatic cell count. And so, okay, thank you. Again, I wasn't trying
Speaker 12
3:21
to put you there. Oh, no, no, absolutely
Representative Jerry R. Brown
Unverified
3:26
not. Thank you, Chair. Do we have any other questions? Any questions or anybody in the audience want to speak for or against this bill? Seeing none, Representative Stewart. Motion to pass. We have a motion to pass. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like, sign. Congratulations, Representative. You have passed your bill or the Senator's bill. We now go to Senate Bill 849, Senator Tigg.
Representative Ratliff, you're going to run that for Senator
Speaker 6
4:00
Tigg. If you will introduce yourself and let the person at the end of the table with you introduce themselves,
Speaker 23
4:08
you may begin. Representative James Ratliff. Debbie Asbury, I'm the Director of
Representative James Ratliff
Unverified
4:13
the Assessment Coordination Department. This bill here is an act concerning assessment of mineral interest and other purposes. I understand this does some things that she's going to explain,
and we're carrying this for the
Speaker 23
4:24
senator here. Basically, what this legislation does is
Speaker 26
4:27
lets us put some action in place that if there are assessors that aren't assessing their producing minerals, which are royalties, that there would be a penalty imposed on them. We have a lot of the assessors in the Fayetteville shell that are doing what they need to do, and we have some other assessors that aren't, and they are catching a lot of flack for doing their job.
And basically, this just lets us put a penalty in place if they –
Speaker 27
4:55
the ones that aren't doing their job. And basically, it's for equity purposes, nothing else. Any questions? Representative
Speaker 28
5:12
Jean. Would you clarify, and I had had a chance to read this all, who
Speaker 26
5:17
the penalty is on? The penalty would be on the assessor's office, and we would treat it like any other real estate
out of compliance, but it would be on the assessor's office. If they didn't do the corrective action, which is put their producing minerals on place after a certain time, we would hold reappraisal money. Okay. For that county? For that county. MR. Thank you. Representative Leading, you have a
Speaker 30
5:44
question? MR. I have a motion at the proper time. MR.
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
5:49
All right, sir. Yes. Representative Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I'm not an expert in this arena, so I'm trying to understand in general what's going
on here, and so let me tell you what I think I'm saying, and then you tell me what's really happening. MS. Okay. It sounds like what you're saying is some assessors are going the way they need to when When somebody's producing minerals and collecting money and making sure that the state gets taxes or whatever we do, some others are not, and people are just producing tax-free, and you want some teeth to be able to force everyone to make sure everybody's paying their taxes. That's exactly right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. President
Speaker 34
6:23
Meeks, did you have your hand? Okay. You go ahead, sir.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
6:27
Two questions. Number one, who would be the governing board to look to see if the assessors are doing their job or not? Who oversees that?
Speaker 27
6:36
The assessment coordination department. Okay. And do you
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
6:39
have any estimates as to how many assessors aren't doing this and what the revenue loss to the state is because they're not? We don't know what the
Speaker 26
6:50
revenue loss is for sure. There are probably about eight or nine counties that are not doing their producing on their gas royalties.
Representative Jerry R. Brown
Unverified
6:58
Okay. All right. Thank you. Other questions? Go to the audience. Anybody for or against the bill would like to speak? Seeing none, Representative Liddy. Representative Liddy. We have a motion do pass. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like. Congratulations, Representative Ratliff.
Speaker 22
7:24
Thank you, Committee. Thank you, Chairman. Let's go to Senate Bill 940, Senator Lamoureux, Representative Link, you want to try this
Representative Kelley Linck
Unverified
7:30
one? Yes, sir. I am Representative Kelly Link, District 86, and in front of you you should have Senate Bill 940 by Senator Lamoureux. Currently Arkansas law when regarding to farmland and perhaps oil and gas and so on so forth, when you lease your land, it's not overly clear, but it seems that the leasers
are taking the idea that they have hunting and fishing rights with that. This law makes it very clear that the landowner keeps the hunting and fishing rights, that the person who leases land for farmland and that type of purposes does not have the right to hunt fish or to sublease and hunt and fish. What it's going to do is it's going to put the law in favor of the landowner unless they have a different lease agreement within the lease.
I hope that makes sense, everybody. It seems like a good common sense of law to me. There may
Speaker 22
8:47
be someone in the audience that can even explain this even further. There is. If Hal would like to
Speaker 47
9:05
come up here and join me. Yes, sir. All right. sir if you please introduce yourself Ernie
Speaker 48
9:09
practicing law here in Little Rock can you shed any further light on this subject yes sir 1986 the Arkansas Court of Appeals rendered a
decision involving the lease of a piece of agricultural property a dispute developed between the landowner and the farming tenant as to who had the right to duck hunt the property property. The tenant claimed that it had the right by virtue of the lease, since the lease didn't expressly exclude it. The landowner contended that it stayed with the landowner. Dispute ensued, and the court decided that the hunting rights by law in Arkansas, by common law in Arkansas, go to the tenant instead of staying with the landowner. This bill would
reverse that decision and provide that unless the landowner expressly grants the hunting and fishing rights to the tenant, those rights would stay and remain vested with the landowner.
Speaker 50
10:05
Will you take questions? Indeed. Representative
Representative John Charles Edwards
Unverified
10:09
Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Essentially what this bill
does, if I'm reading it correctly, we're clarifying what the responsibilities of the parties can be, and we're still keeping everything in place that
if the parties want to have a mutual agreement of how to put these hunting rights in there, they can. But it makes certain that the property owner will retain those rights unless they, with the tenant, mutually agree to have them put into the contract. We're just trying to keep unintended consequences from happening. Is that what we're really doing here? That's precisely what we're attempting to do here.
Speaker 34
10:53
Representative Linderman, did you have a question? Yes, sir. All right, sir. Thank
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
11:08
you, Mr. Chairman. Probably one of the things that I'm interested in is how is this information going to be relayed to
Speaker 13
11:14
the public so that someone doesn't go out there and find himself in violation of the law? I'm going to, and I guess maybe I'm not doing a good job of asking my questions.
Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Farm Bureau, have they taken a stance on this bill that you know
Speaker 55
11:30
of? I'm not aware of it, sir, no. I assume
Speaker 13
11:36
that they support it, but I'm not aware of it. Okay. How are we going to get the word out to the public? Is this something that will be sent out in some kind of way to become a normal part of contracts? I mean, some people, a lot of people use simply some kind of a prepared contract or something like that.
Speaker 46
11:56
Well, at present, I don't think the issue is addressed, and this bill is an effort to
Speaker 48
12:02
create a solution for that problem. Most banks that are loaning money on cropland, most brokers that are dealing with leases, most agents that are handling hunting and fishing rights are not aware of this anomaly in the law, and it's created confusion about who has the respective rights. So this is curative in nature first, and the way it would be disseminated would be through
Speaker 61
12:28
the various organizations and agencies that deal
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
12:32
with those types of leases. I guess I have one little thing that says, unless it's expressly granted in writing, I assume that everything in the
Speaker 13
12:41
lease must be in writing. But Arkansas law now says that if land is not posted, you can have a verbal agreement. Does that conflict with that current law? Does this conflict with that?
Speaker 48
12:51
Sir, I think you're talking about two different relationships. One of them is the right that a tenant acquires by virtue of leasing a piece of farm property,
and the other is the grant of a right by a landowner to you to hunt their land, and
Representative John Charles Edwards
Unverified
13:11
those are two distinct relationships. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Reverend Edwards.
Just to get back to Representative Lenderman's question, if we pass this law, any standard contracts out there today, we would eliminate the confusion by the fact or the landowner would be protected
and the parties would be protected from the standpoint that if it's not expressly in the contract, then the hunting rights are still preserved with the landowner. So the dissemination, the parties would not really be harmed because is it correct that when most of the time, at least in my experience, if someone's leasing a farm, the principal reason they're leasing the farm is to farm the property. Is that correct? That
Speaker 34
14:03
Yeah, okay, yeah. Thank you. Representative Shepard, did you
Representative Matthew Shepherd
Unverified
14:10
have a question to enter? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have just, I guess, a couple of technical questions, and I understand what the intent is and the attempt to do is. I guess I wanted some clarification. With regard to subsection B, it says the farmland owner's right to hunt or fish on his or her farmland includes without limitation, and one of the things it includes is the right to travel
by any vehicle on or over the farmland. And then up in A1, we've said that the tenant of the lease or rented farmland shall have no right to hunt or fish, and we've described hunting and fishing to include traveling across the farmland. I don't think that it's intended that the tenant can't travel across the farmland. Is that correct? No, sir. And again, I think
Speaker 48
14:59
those are two disparate positions. The right of the landowner to continue to travel on over and across the property and to engage in hunting rights that are enumerated in this bill are intended to ensure that the landowner is not deemed to be interfering with the production of the agricultural production that's going on.
So that's why the express grants are given. The right of the tenant to possess the property and to operate on the property, that's dealt with in the lease agreement, either a verbal expression of the lease or a written expression. So, again, those are two independent. I guess my only concern was
Representative Matthew Shepherd
Unverified
15:36
it appeared we were defining what the right to hunt or fish was, and we're saying the tenant has no right to hunt or fish, and it's been described here as that's part of the right. But I guess what you're telling me is there's a distinction between what the farm owner and the tenant, their rights might be.
Speaker 48
15:54
Yes, sir. Their rights are separate and distinct.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
16:05
Okay. Representative Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The question I have is a question relating to a liability issue. If there happens to be an accident of some sort where the, whether it's for, you know, my area, a lot of oil and gas drilling going on, the land is leased, hunting goes on, damage is done to that equipment, how does the liability work out there?
If the landowner creates the problem, is the tenant going to be held liable for any damage done to their equipment or to their operations? Does that question make sense? It does,
Speaker 55
16:46
Representative, although this bill does not address the issue of liability at
Speaker 48
16:52
all. Liability lies with wherever there is a duty of care and wherever the breach of that duty occurs. So a landowner certainly could have a duty of care and breach that duty and give rise to a loss or damage that the landowner has responsibility for.
A landowner's guest in the course of hunting has a duty of care, could breach that duty and cause liability and damage. Likewise, the tenant has comparable duties. So this bill does not address liability issues. Those issues, again, extend under a whole other body of law. Okay, so you don't
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
17:28
see this affecting the tenant's liability rights at all? No, sir, I do not. All right, thank you. Other questions?
Representative Jerry R. Brown
Unverified
17:41
Go to the audience. Anybody want to speak against or for the bill? What's the committee's pleasure? Representative Edwards? Motion do pass. We have a motion do pass. All in favor say aye. Opposed,
Speaker 22
18:02
like. Congratulations, Representative. You've passed your bill. Thank you. Thank
Speaker 6
18:07
you, Committee, and good betting. Committee, I believe we've done a good day's job in about 20, 25 minutes. I will say I know right now our agenda is very limited,
but if there's any sponsor that would like to put any of these bills that's remaining in interim study, that they can do that one or two ways. They can come through the committee with a recommendation that it go to AGRI in the interim. We just recommend. Or you can also go to the third floor and see
Representative Jerry R. Brown
Unverified
18:37
Ms. Amber. You want to do it here or you want to go just see Amber? Just go see Amber. Yeah.
We don't want to mess with you. And when you go see Amber, just tell her you'd recommend that it go to the AGRI committee. The other thing, if you don't do that, what I'm telling you is that your other option is to wait until the session's over and go to legislative council that meets monthly, but that's a complete new ballgame. They have the freedom to put your bill in any committee for interim study that they would like, and you don't have a request there, I understand. Anything else?
Speaker 6
19:20
Mr. Davies, you want to tell a funny story or joke while you've got a quorum? No, sir, I
Speaker 12
19:26
think I landed a little too far last night. I understand. I can appreciate that. If there's nothing else, we stand adjourned.
Agenda
Call to Order
SB242
SB849
SB940
Adjournment
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Representative Jerry R. Brown
Unverified
Speaker 6
Representative John Charles Edwards
Unverified
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
Speaker 12
Speaker 23
Representative James Ratliff
Unverified
Speaker 26
Speaker 27
Speaker 28
Speaker 30
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
Speaker 34
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 22
Representative Kelley Linck
Unverified
Speaker 47
Speaker 48
Speaker 50
Speaker 55
Speaker 13
Speaker 46
Speaker 61
Representative Matthew Shepherd
Unverified