House Rules

All if you'll take a minute let's just introduce ourselves real quick there's some freshman in here who may not know of the lobbyists may not know what I want to give them a chance to get to know him so if we'll just start here with representative Lane Jean and go around that would be great. All right I'm a seventh term and I think my fifth term on the rules committee thank you. Jon Eubanks district forty six which is all of Logan County south Franklin County a small portion of South Sebastian County and a small portion of south Johnson County on my seventh term and might determine this committee. Ready Steve McGee District fifty six Conway of six term I think I've been on this committee three terms glad to be back. I'm Carol Dalby district one hundred Texarkana I came on this committee my freshman year to fill out a term and have served on ever since I'm starting my fourth or so I guess I've been on the Committee three and a half terms and looking forward to it again thank you madam chair. My name is Jeremiah Moore I represent districts sixty one it covers a southeast thirty Jackson County all of which of county eastern thirty per accounting a little over half Monroe County the most Arkansas County this is my first term in the legislature and I'm honored to be here. That does feel District fifty three Russellville honor to be a part of this committee looking forward to working for the people of my district in the great state of Arkansas if you need anything reach out to me anytime thank you. Representative Frank have also serving District thirty now which is part a large greening Craighead County this is my fourth term in my first time rules. Milton Nicks district thirty five what should because most of accrediting council test in my fifth term my first term here on this committee thank you. Hi Lanny Fite District eighty three Salim Cananea I go from hot springs village all the way back to Bryant this is my fifth term in my third the rules committee thank you. My name is Ken Ferguson District sixty four serving parts of Jefferson Lincoln initiate County I'm in my fifth term and this is my second term on this committee. J. R. my name is Dwight Tosh the starting my bill term a representative district thirty eight which is the southern part of cricket council most of the quite a bit of Poinsett county and also part of Jackson County election this mobile terms as before to the four time on the rules and it's great honor for me to serve. Thank you madam chair Mike Holcomb assert District ninety three which is Jefferson Lincoln Cleveland Andrew counties I'm in my six tarm in may of former Jefferson County judge retired educator thank you. Shad peers District forty which encompasses quite a bit of Batesville in is a little bit of on the south end of of beat Southend of white and a little bit of Claiborne this is my first term I am very honored to be here and. I'm ready to get going. Thank you. And I'm representative damn Vaught and I do southwest corner it's District eighty seven now tries to get used to that new number and this is my fifth time to be on this committee and my first time to tear and I'm excited to be the chair of this committee and look forward to working with all of the all. And with that I will recognize less eaves a representative less is on behalf of the Speaker add to present house resolution one thousand and one. State your name for the record and you may begin. Thank you madam chairwoman my name is represented less issues. but it feels a little bit weird to be on this side of the table. The what I have before you is House resolution one thousand one this would be the rules we with that hopefully adopt for the ninety four General Assembly there's not a whole lot of changes some of the more substantial changes are based on laws we passed in a bid fiscal session and then the session before that and with your permission I'd like to have our parliamentarian kind of go through the details of the resolution you're recognized Mr parliamentarian please state your name for the record. Thank you madam chair of I'm Buddy Johnson I'm parliamentarian of the House representatives and have been so for ten years now so US pleasure be here thank you the members of the committee for having me I want this just to preface the the Speaker develop the house resolution one thousand one and you took and you know. Hardware marks from members year leading up to the this session beginning incorporated some of those and that would lease one of them in the the final draft of the rules now like to go over with the with the with. The proposal with you today so beginning on page sixteen you'll notice there are a number of formatting changes in the end and those don't they're they're not substantive there just simply to make the rules more consistent in in format in the in an outline you know lack of thirty eight AM one it's center and that that's just a formatting change that begins on sixteen and those kind of changes will be throughout the document. The substantive changes begin on page seventeen and there in continue throughout the document both in the body of the rules and in the committee rules addendum to the to the House rules these reflect changes as a representative said there were adopted since our previous regular session of began They add up some of the legislation dealing with the state health benefit plans and with the higher education scholarships and ID elements of rules in their in their adoption. The health benefit of legislation was ACT one twelve of the twenty twenty two fiscal session and also house concurrent resolution one thousand two of the twenty twenty two fiscal session the legislation adopted the it's. Some of the. About bill filing deadline and also the requirement for fiscal impact statement and those rules related and we thought it appropriate to include them in the rules resolution to be consistent with other. Requirements such as that. Of the health benefits must be filed fifteen within the first fifteen days of the session it restricts the introduction of such legislation during fiscal sessions in extraordinary sessions and it requires fiscal impact statements the higher education scholarship portion of work was part of Act six thirty six of the up twenty one regular session so as you can see that that bill passed well into the session and it was not incorporated in either the joint rules or the House rules but they are being rolled into the draft of the of the rules for the ninety first General Assembly. It requires that up higher education scholarship legislation be introduced within the first the or by that in the thirty first day of the session restricts introduction during fiscal special sessions and it requires fiscal impact statements so throughout these rules you'll see references to both top legislation in again this is and something that appeared out of nowhere this this is consistent with legislation that has already been adopted by the General Assembly. On page nineteen you'll see that The health benefit plan and scholarship language is incorporated into the requirement for of fiscal impact statements and legislation before the S. there were five categories of bills that required fiscal impact statements and those are municipalities counties education K. through twelve corrections in lottery so now we have two more top bills that require fiscal impact statement under this well they're already required under law this would put making part of the rules. Page twenty five. Is another substantive changes is is is is is probably so minor you may not have realized this rules even in here the R. a number of years ago the house adopted a rule that created a calendar for members to amend their own bills and this allows is is being a creates an administrative process for you to manage your bills without having to do so on the whole on the floor of the House winner in session before then a big part of the the legislative day would be taken up with members coming down to the floor and say my bill my amendment Christian a good vote and then the house voting on it in if there were twenty of those the people in the galleries would just be scratching their head saying what's going on here so anyway yes the members on calendar was created to streamline that process but retain the requirement that all amendments to any bill have to be approved by the whole House and so this is done and if you have an objection to something that's on that calendar you're certainly welcome to object to it and then it would come before the for the entire body the rule one is that. That calendar had to be developed and put on your desk by four thirty PM each day and most of the time that won an issue but it became an issue on occasion if a member came into the clerk's office want to do a member's own amendment if it was after four thirty they were out of luck it really came of an issue during the COVID session because so many of the committees met in the afternoons and if the bill came out of committee do pass as amended the sponsor that bill was unable to get it on the members on calendar for the next day and it just it just added a day to do that person's process of trying to get their bill passed this substantive change on page twenty five it's in a rule forty seven Q. eliminates the four thirty PM deadline and that that's all it does you made the note that there is no similar deadline for are read calendar our main counter on the House floor nor for the yellow Budget counter they that those counters can be put out at any time this was the only one that had a a firm deadline for it's a. Distribution and this rule change eliminates that deadline. On page thirty one there's a very slight substantive change on about committee memberships and the it talks about the instance where of a member may. A past way resign or be it the language had been impeached and and your came to our attention that that's really not accurate description of of the status of a member because members of the house foreign impeached but they may be expelled so we change the word and impeachment to expulsion so that that's all that does. On page forty five is another service to change but it's one that's already been implemented through the Definition of the Legislative the House caucus districts that include that have twenty five house districts in the check in each caucus district and those the numbers were identified in when we had our organizational meeting after election day to draw for seniority and and choose committees you adopted this list this change in the rules merely plugs that those lists into the permanent house rules where they will remain in place until the next census is done ten years from now and most of us probably won't be around anymore so anyway this is a. That's that's what that does that that's in rule number eighty two. page fifty seven of HR one thousand one. And we're here we're in the committee rule addendum to the house rules up section nineteen this is probably the most substantive in for reaching rule change the Speaker is proposing this change will return the process of committee agenda is back to the method used before the COVID session. During the COVID session a number of emergency rules were implemented of. That took into consideration some of the constraints that were in place for the legislative committee meetings You know with social distancing and and this and that of it that rule change in part allowed up committee chairs to specify the agendas for their given meetings. It also but it the the route the permanent rules as written also had that incorporated in it And then to me this may be an example of of of fixing something that wasn't broken and members approached the Speaker about the interest of returning to the old method or the the method they've been used for a of couple decades of Committee agenda is being set really chronologically back when a bill was introduced of bills introduced read twice assigned to committee it automatically goes on the Committee agenda in the term in in the order it's red and so that list becomes the agenda of the of the of the committee. And until the code session that's that's where it had been in this rule change goes the takes it back to that process we're every bill that's how the committee agendas or appeared and then it's up to the committee to manage of it's each list of bills but every bill assigned to that committee appears on that on that list that's how the agenda is formed it just reverts to the pre covered session committee agenda process. So madam chair that covers all the changes encompassed in HR one thousand one I'll be happy to answer any questions. There any questions. Good job would you like to. Would you like to close for your committee your resolutions room I'm I'm close for my resolution I appreciate a good vote. All right. You may be excuse for a few minutes thank you Sir. Yeah will you please pass out the amendments that are here please. There's four of them. Sorry we got a little bit of passing out today not hang with the. So there's at three amendments from representative Hodges and one from a representative Lundstrum and representative Hodges is signing his I believe or sign. Okay. Okay and representative Hodges has said he's withdrawing his for right now right representative Hodges so we will not be voting on that one today but we'll be listening to representative Lundstrum thank you representative Hodges for being here. resented LUNDSTRUM you're recognized to present Amendment. Your amendment. entities yourself for the record sorry. Thank you madam chairman. I'm this is just for discussion I realize we're not taking any motions today. I'm. This is my fifth term and every time we've come across an election we said well we'll wait on the speaker's election we'll wait next term will have a rule that says we'll do a roll call vote next term will do roll will discuss it next time we'll discuss it will put it in the rules this simply actually puts it in the rules as a roll call vote and it's pretty simple it just says a voice vote by roll call that's the only change is pretty clear well we don't have an election well it's often the future this adds that transparency so I'd like to put that before the rules committee to be added to our rules and is that for every committee representative now this is only for the speaker's race just referred the speaker's race thank you I just wanted to make sure it was clarified are there any questions representative Lane Jean you're recognized thank you ma'am of reserve Lundstrum up I've been pushing for the S. and I thank. Our former colleague. All represented Davis help pass the rules the last time and hi I just never could get enough support. And I do agree that we should and I don't. About roll call at a why did you leave out just electronic vote on the board. There just wasn't a clear way we could do person a and person B.. Or we could just do a straight roll call okay I'm open to any change I just thought before we have the emotional charge of a race we should put in our rules and make it for the ninety fifth I'm okay I'm agreeing with you on the ninety fifth we need to make it a public vote yes and I appreciate you bringing this forward and I thought this was a simple and cleanest way to do it okay thank you. Representive Eubanks you're recognized. You madam chair I I don't know that I have a particular problem with this because I always usually make my position clear early on and everybody knows what my boat's going to be I I am afraid of. A situation where By it being a public vote it might subject people to. Some sort of harassment. And and that's what I'm concerned about I think that's why when we you know the boats that we we cast and our regular elections are secret it's it's to prevent people from ever having to do you know any type of retribution of any sort but like I said I I don't have a necessarily have a problem for myself because I always make it perfectly clear where I stand so I felt that way at first but I've learned around here there aren't any secrets the walls have ears the floors have years and there are many secrets we take votes every day that are difficult sometimes we have to vote against other people's bills that we like parts of the bill some parts of bills we don't we've had to put on our big girl pants a Big Boy pants and go and then have the next bill and then agree and disagree and they go have lunch with each other so we in an effort to have transparency we put our votes on the board every day. I think this is just one more step towards more transparency thank you. Are there any other questions. I appreciate your amendment I appreciate you all white sorry I didn't see representative Ferguson I'm so sorry thank you madam chair one quick question the president of lots of any one amendment did you take into consideration I have a hundred members voting if you get twenty members abstained and not to vote and only have eighty members voting in the Speaker does not receive a fifty plus vote this you amendment take in consideration of that will have that began if someone chooses not to cast their vote that's their choice. I mean that's their vote to cast or not cast if they're in the room and they choose not to vote that is still there blowing their vote they choose not to cast. I guess if it was a quick question I have here I guess what I'm asking. If you don't have let's say twenty people decided not to vote in this forty forty. So are you saying that the Speaker could be elected by a plurality does you amendment taking effect of that or how would that be happy the only thing I took in consideration was if someone was absent due to illness that they could do a absentee ballot but that would still be read out I can't imagine someone taking such a precious thing is their vote for Speaker and then choosing not to vote. But that is still their choice we have that we have that you might have to have a second round but that's okay okay all right thank you. Representive Eubanks you're recognized thank you managers questions for the parliamentarian is it I didn't check to the rules is a fifty plus one or is that a majority of the core. Eubanks is fifty one okay thank you in in the the. The portion of the house rules that this would a man has provisions for a run off if if the if not if none of the candidates received the majority vote then the top two vote getters. There will be at a sept another valid on that. So we would continue to have ballot after ballot until the Speaker is elected B. I guess that's what my in there yes okay it's never been in practice but that that's the idea okay thank you. Any other questions. Saying no other questions would you like to close this. It's a privilege to serve here it's a privilege to vote these rules are how we govern this body and how we avoid chaos. This is a privilege to get to vote for Speaker. And I think it's important that people know and see our votes in CS cast our votes and transparency is the most important thing it stops gossip. And it breeds trust from the people back home when they see us cast our votes and I would beg you to put these in the rules now so that it's clear when the time comes and we get to cast that vote for Speaker it's in the rules. Thank you and I would ask for a good vote when the time comes thank you. Okay what's the will of the committee. Evernham a vote on the amendment okay. And but I I support this it has we've done every session we will have a rules package before the session over to deal with the ninety fifth and I'm supporting this in that package that has the session gets towards me and and I think that's the proper time to do this that's that's Lane Jean to opinion thank you. If I may ask a question yes ma'am when will that time be to submit those. Them now but I think there's gonna be a package of what we do for the ninety fifth General Assembly and we normally do that of it in the March April time frame and adopted before we leave before the vote of four gavel out so it'll be done this session. In any other comments. Thank you for bringing the S. it's a great amendment and I look forward to bring it back thank you madam chairman. Representative aids you're recognized to close for your bill or resolution sorry. When based on body size Details I'm closed. What's the will of the committee. We have a motion to adopt we have second. Second. All in favor say aye. Any opposed. Your resolution is passed. And we are adjourned.