Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative & Military Affairs- House
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Bills discussed (7)
| Bill | Title | Sponsor | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
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HB1388
Act 838
· 3 mentions in transcript
Matched: “Services only. Representative Penzo has a bill, House Bill 1388, for private adoptions, which has passed”
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TO PROVIDE FOR VOLUNTARY POST-ADOPTION CONTACT AGREEMENTS. | Penzo | Notification that HB1388 is now Act 838 |
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SB167
· 3 mentions in transcript, agenda
Matched: “…is meeting at this same time. So we're going to start with Senate Bill 167. Senator Clark, you are recognized. Representative Penzo, y…”
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TO PROVIDE FOR POST-ADOPTION CONTACT AGREEMENTS. | A. Clark | Died in House Committee at Sine Die Adjournment |
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HB1500
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “HB1500 C. Fite TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING THE PROPERTY TAX EXEMPT…”
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TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING THE PROPERTY TAX EXEMPTION FOR DISABLED VETERANS, THEIR SURVIVING SPOUSES, … | C. Fite | Died in House Committee at Sine Die Adjournment |
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HB18
· 1 mention in transcript
Matched: “…t parents in DHS foster care cases. testified on our bills, House Bill 18, 13, 14, and 15, about two weeks ago, and I made my disclai…”
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Pre-2017 bill | ||
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HB1850
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…7 A. Clark TO PROVIDE FOR POST-ADOPTION CONTACT AGREEMENTS. HB1850 Fielding CONCERNING CHILD SUPPORT OWED BY A NONCUSTODIAL PA…”
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CONCERNING CHILD SUPPORT OWED BY A NONCUSTODIAL PARENT WHO IS INCARCERATED. | Fielding | Died in House Committee at Sine Die Adjournment |
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HB1894
Act 920
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…Rep. Mark D. McElroy REGULAR AGENDA Number Sponsor Subtitle HB1894 Barker TO CREATE THE BLUE RIBBON TASK FORCE TO END CHILD AB…”
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TO CREATE THE BLUE RIBBON TASK FORCE TO END CHILD ABUSE. | Barker | Notification that HB1894 is now Act 920 |
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SB589
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…er TO CREATE THE BLUE RIBBON TASK FORCE TO END CHILD ABUSE. SB589 B. Ballinger CONCERNING THE MODIFICATION OF A CHILD CUSTODY…”
|
CONCERNING THE MODIFICATION OF A CHILD CUSTODY OR VISITATION ORDER. | B. Ballinger | Died in House Committee at Sine Die Adjournment |
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Without objection, we're going to take things slightly out of order. Senator Clark is here, and he has a heavy schedule also over at Judiciary, which is meeting at this same time. So we're going to start with Senate Bill 167. Senator Clark, you are recognized. Representative Penzo, you're recognized to join him. And you have an amendment, if you would present that first, please. Yes, and we would
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
0:26
like to ask, Madam Chair, if we could have Glenn Hoggard join us.
Yes. If you would just introduce yourself to the committee when you come to
Glenn Hoggard
Unverified
0:56
the table, please. Thank you. Madam Chair, my name is Glenn Hoggard. I am a parent counsel. I have been for 17 years representing parents in DHS cases.
Glenn Hoggard
Unverified
1:08
towards you a bit. Okay, or I'll scoot up. My name is Glenn Hoggard. I'm a parent counsel. I have been for 17 years. I represent parents in DHS foster care cases. testified on our bills, House Bill 18, 13, 14, and 15, about two weeks ago, and I made my disclaimers then, so I need to make them now. Some of y'all may know me because I sit on the Bar Association Legislation Committee. I am not here in that capacity today.
I am not here representing the Parent Council program. I'm here
as a private practitioner. All right. Thank you
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:47
for that clarification. We're ready to hear the amendment. The amendment does two things. It clarifies that this is for all children under 18, and it also clarifies that this is for post-adoption agreements for the Department of Human
Services only. Representative Penzo has a bill, House Bill 1388, for private adoptions, which has passed
through the House and passed through Senate Judiciary this morning, and which covers other adoptions. This bill is a companion bill that covers just the DHS,
and that amendment is to make it clear to separate the two. Members, any questions about
the amendment? Okay, seeing none, do we have a motion to accept the amendment? All in favor, say aye.
Aye. Opposed, say no. The amendment is adopted, and we're ready to
Speaker 22
3:01
would you like to start? Madam Chair, if I may. Okay. So, Senate Bill 167 provides for post-adoption contract agreements, contact agreements, I should say. The members of this committee have seen the basic parameters of this bill before. Representative Penzo brought before you a bill that was promulgated by the private adoption bar and brought before you.
It was amended and passed out of this committee, passed the House. and as Senator Clark said, it passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, or it's on the agenda, I don't know if it's passed yet, today. Passed this morning. Passed this morning, okay. This bill does primarily the same thing. It has a couple of tweaked differences than Representative Penzo's bill. It deals, first of all, only with DHS foster adoptions. The kids in those adoptions have been in a foster case.
The parents' parental rights have been terminated, and those kids are eligible for adoption, this bill would allow there to be an agreement between the adopting family and the birth family for some level of contact, whatever they agree upon. We heard about these bills originally from the two Georgia judges, I think. We referenced them before in earlier bills. We had two Georgia judges come and speak in October to a joint interim committee meeting of the Judiciary Committee,
and they told us about this. They described for us agreements that were as small as the adopting family getting an email address and keeping it open for the life of the adopted child just so that there was a contact point through which the parties could exchange some information, up to and including full-fledged agreements with the birth grandparents or family members where they were going to continue to play exactly that same role in the adopted child's life.
And all stops in between, including agreements between birth mothers and adopting families where the mother would have a role in that child's life. It is, in my estimation, and certainly based on what the Georgia judges told us, it is an outstanding thing to do. This will not affect an adoption decree. This will allow contact with a legal regimen.
We've been told over and over again in this process, this is already happening all the time. but there is no regimen, there is no framework by which these parties can agree to undergo this process, and we're going to give them that process if you'll pass this bill. The two principal differences between Representative Penzo's bill and Senator Clark's bill, as I read them, are beyond the fact that one's private adoptions and one's DHS adoptions, so setting that aside,
the two principal differences are in Reverend Penzo's bill, all the agreements had to occur prior to the adoption taking place. In Senator Clark's bill, they can occur both before or after the adoption. In DHS cases, that is an important element. Before the adoption takes place, there's going to be a procedure where the parents' rights terminated. It may be a very contested, highly controversial, fought-out hearing where a judge has to issue an order terminating the
parental rights of a parent who is deathly opposed to it. It's probably not the best time in the world to be talking to them about if they want to enter into an agreement to have contact after the adoption takes place. And so that's the primary principal reason that that difference exists. The second basic difference is that there is an enforcement element in this bill that did not exist in Representative Penzo's bill that was passed. If there is a dispute between the parties who have agreed previously, in Representative Penzo's bill, they would submit to mediation to resolve the dispute.
In this bill, the dispute would be resolved by the juvenile court that had originally granted the adoption. so it would be court involved. At one point in time, there was a contention that the court involvement would create a large, large caseload and a new amount of work for the judiciary. Representative McClure, I believe you asked Judge Hirschfeld, who testified on that bill, whether or not he was opposed to the bill because of the additional work,
and he indicated to this committee he was not. He didn't see that as a problem. The testimony of the attorneys in the private adoption bar who are in this area and who did this significant research on a nationwide basis of the 25 states that have these type of agreements already in existence, there's, first of all, precious little conflict that takes place after the agreements are in place, precious little case law that shows us what happens when the two parties get into a contest with one another.
And there is virtually no appellate case law at all on these cases, which clearly indicates if you don't have any cases that have been on appeal before appellate court and opinions rendered, there's not a lot of controversy. If there were controversy, those cases would have appellate opinions that were issued. The reason that we believe that this needs to be before the juvenile court is, again, because these are DHS cases. and they involve a little bit different animal than the animal the parties and the processes
that are involved in a private adoption and so I'm very much in favor of this bill again speaking as a 17-year parent council this will do a whole lot of things for me in my practice it will allow me to tell the grandmother you can still be the grandmother if we can get an agreement it will allow me to tell my client, 18-year-old mother who's about to have a parental rights terminated, if you want to talk about having an agreement before we go to termination, we can do that. If you want to talk about having an agreement after termination, we can do that.
But there is a way for us to rescue some contact with your child if the other party is in agreement. Now, let me remind you, just as the other bill, these agreements are all entirely voluntary. If both parties are not in agreement, not going to happen. If one of the parties says, I don't want to do this, or one of the parties says, I don't want to agree to that detail in the agreement, it's not going to happen. They both have to be in agreement. They both have to put it in writing, and they both have to be willing to go before the court
and say, this is our agreement. so there's not going to be any ability to leverage or coerce anybody into doing anything because if there's no agreement there's if the parties are not in agreement there is no application of this statute. Finally one of the things that I want to say I can give you an example of how this would have been very helpful legislation in the recent past some of y'all who are aware of DHS cases are aware that there was a situation here in Pulaski
County where family members were not being treated in a very, what's the word I want to use, friendly manner by one of the three juvenile judges in Pulaski County. It was difficult for grandparents to get placement with their grandchildren. It was difficult for grandparents to adopt grandchildren. And the premise of the judge that was hearing the cases for the five years that that judge had juvenile cases was that they should have stepped in quicker and by virtue of their failing to step in before there was a DHS case, that indicated that they weren't fit.
I had a grandparent contact me and asked me to represent her in one of those situations. She was a retired elementary school principal who in retirement was running her church's licensed daycare center. Let me say that again. She was a retired elementary school principal who was running her church's licensed daycare center. She had licenses, pedigrees, background checks out the wazoo. And yet, the court said,
you should have stepped in quicker in your son's case. I'm not letting your kids go with you. Now, that
Speaker 30
11:42
was going to be a heck of a court fight, and she was going to have a tough time winning in front of that judge.
Speaker 22
11:49
But we were ready to go to court. And just fate and the good Lord looking after us, she ran into the adoptive parent in a grocery store and the adoptive parent said I know you I went to your elementary school I'm going to adopt these kids and you're going to be their grandmother now they don't have an agreement they don't have anything on paper that's just how that
worked out if we had had this bill in place when that all went down they could have an agreement that would be enforceable and that both parties would understand the parameters of without there been any question without there being any dispute because it would all be laid out and everybody would agree to it in advance. This bill would have helped in that situation where I was representing that grandmother would have helped a lot and I just am thankful to the good Lord that she ran into the adoptive parent just by the grace of God and is still the grandparent to those three kids
Speaker 21
12:39
today. Madam Chair, I'm through. Thank you very
much. We do have some questions. Representative Hudson. Thank you, Madam
Representative Ashley Hudson
Unverified
12:50
Chair, and thank you, Mr. Hoggard, for being here today on this bill. I was reading through it when you were
going through the differences between this bill and House Bill 1388, which Representative Penzo brought to us a couple of weeks ago. And one big distinction that I see between the two is that in Representative Penzo's bill, it refers strictly to the birth parents, whereas in this bill you use the term,
or Senator Clark uses the term, birth relative, which expands that definition out beyond parents to grandparents, brothers, sisters, half-brothers, half-sisters, and all of those additional relatives who may be related to the adopted child. My concern is this. What you just mentioned is the fact that we're talking about situations in which a parent may have had their parental rights revoked, essentially, taken by the state because of something they've done, and so it's a contentious proceeding.
Don't you think that there is risk and danger associated with allowing family members to enter into agreements with the adoptive parents in a situation in which the birth parent may not
wish for that contact to occur. So,
Speaker 38
14:00
Reverend Hudson, as I'm sure you're aware, any adoption, private or DHS
Speaker 22
14:05
adopt, any adoption by nature and definition of the process includes the cessation of the parental rights of the birth parent,
whether it's in a DHS case where it's hotly contested after a year's worth of reunification services or whether it's done through an adoption agency where everyone is matched and agreed and there's help with expenses on the part of the adopting family. But in either one of those events, the parental rights have to be terminated before the adoption can take place. So as to the danger in terms of dealing with the family members, and the way I refer to it is the birth family, that encompasses everybody that's included
in that list of relatives in the statute, in the bill, rather, if the birth family has the opportunity to enter an agreement and to continue to provide additional family support for the adopted child, it's got to be good. Now, if you're asking me, can I conceive of any situation where this might turn into a bad deal? Well, sure. We're human, and I'm certain there is the opportunity for folks to do bad in this situation, just like there is in any other.
But what I am encouraged about is that we're going to, I tell my clients all the time, you cannot have enough family. And that's what we're going to do in this situation if this passes. We will create opportunities for these adopted children to have both the family that they were born with and the adopted family so that they will have increased their family structure. It's got to be a good thing. Follow-up, Madam Chair. Could I add to that? Yes, yes and yes.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
15:47
The it was great question and the You know
often, you know private adoptions often we're dealing with infants and sometimes with these adoptions we're dealing with infants and small kids, but often we're dealing with eight-year-olds or twelve-year-olds and often there's a grandmother or or an aunt that, and let's go back to 58% of these cases are substance abuse involved.
And parent, there may not be any abuse. It may be neglect. And no matter what everybody does, this parent or these parents can't get their act together. But this child who's been through whatever they've been through, or children who've been through whatever they've been through has one stable person in their life for all these years. And for us to say that we can and should cut that person out
and cut that relationship out, and that's in the best interest of the child, I think is extremely short-sighted. It also ignores the fact that such a huge percentage of these kids, when they turn 18, go back to their biofamilies. You can't take out the memories of an 8-year-old or a 12-year-old and the relationships that they've had. And to be able to continue this, I mean, this morning we had testimony from both parents who had continued, who participated in these agreements and with adoptive parents who had continued with these agreements and talked about how great they were.
And if they're needed in private
adoptions, they're needed much more in DHS adoptions, exponentially more. Representative Crawford. Thank you, Madam Chair. We'll
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
17:58
circle back to you. Over here. I appreciate you guys being here. I appreciate the heart behind the bill. My understanding is, and I'll be honest, Senator Clark, when I came in, I really thought I was going to run circles around DHS.
because of what I dealt with in my daily life of taking care of young women and children at a home. But one thing I found out is that Ms. Martin, when she came in, set some policies in place to where they now look at families first rather than what they did 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years ago. And I was impressed with how that policy is laid out,
the stuff that we see at this committee that shows what they do, and it shows the statistical data on that. The other is I believe grandparents should be involved. I'm a grandparent, and I know through what I've been through, through those past years, that was dislocated, and it was even gone. However, we're looking at a new time and a new day. We're looking at what I heard a judge,
and we were looking at one family that I heard from of how this affected. Let me tell you how it affected one of the young ladies
that I worked with. Representative Crawford, this is the time for questions. Do you have
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
19:39
is in the best interest of young women girls boys who have been raised by drug parents to come back in their life and to take them down the same path that they've been
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
19:53
No. There has to be an agreement between the
adoptive parents and between the relatives that would be part of the agreement. and there has to be, on page 3, line 21 through 24, it says the court shall enter an order to enforce a post-adoption contact agreement
if the court finds by preponderance of the evidence that the enforcement or termination of the post-adoption contact agreement is in the best interest of the child. This is about as permissive as you can get. no judge would ever have to do a post-adoption DHS agreement because if they didn't believe it was ever in the best interest of the child it would be as simple as that but it would certainly if any judge ever thought it was in the best interest of a child they could and so are there
cases where you would never want that to happen absolutely but are there cases where it we absolutely would want it to happen and need it to happen, yes, and
right now we have nothing in law to enable it.
Representative Gayla H. McKenzie
Unverified
21:18
Representative McKenzie. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm trying to wrap my head around as far as if I approach this from an attorney representing the adoptive parents. I am trying
to think of any scenario where I would want to advise them to enter into one of these because what I'm looking at, and that's why I'm telling me where I'm wrong here, what I'm looking at is you can already, if you're an adoptive parent, you can allow any of these family members into your child's life, and you have control over that, but if things go south if you enter into one of these agreements and things go south you as
adoptive parent you're tethered until they're 18 you're I mean you are responsible for all these things with this child as you should be and that's what you signed up for and they're yours now and the responsibility and the heartache all those things that go with parenting but you're now tethered by this agreement with some folks that once things go south it looks like you've got to come, unlike with Penzo's bill, which I really warmed up to and liked once we got it to where you could walk away with arbitration, but if I understand this correctly here, you're
tethering yourself as an adoptive parent, and when things go wrong, you're going to have to be back in court. Is
Speaker 22
22:41
that correct? In order to walk away from the agreement, if the, so there are going to be two parties, and I'm going to do this in the example that you've set forth, if that's all right. So the adopting family enters into an agreement with the birth family. The adopting family at some point says, this is not working and I want to quit it.
Then in order to do that, either the birth family would have to not press the issue in a legal setting. That's an obvious possibility. If the adoptive family says, I don't want to do this anymore, and they just quit doing it, then that works just fine for the adopting family. But if the birth family wants to press the issue, then they can take that to court. By the same token, if the adoptive family wants to go to court and say,
give me a release from this agreement and here's why, they have the absolute right to do that. The original premise of the question was as an attorney advising the adopting family. So in a DHS adoption, the huge percentage of those adoptions are done by foster parents that have had those kids in their home for a while. The department, while not technically their attorney, represents those foster parents that are doing the adopting.
And so that's who would be advising the foster parents in that instance. Let me tell you who is going to want to do this from the adopting side the most. I've got lousy foster parents, I've got mediocre foster parents, and I've got really good foster parents. And I'm thinking of one in particular family in Cleburne County. I'm not going to name them or identify them, but they are advocates for the parents. They help parents try to get their kids back. If it's a dirty house that can't get cleaned up there
and they're helping them clean it up. If it's a drug issue, which 80% of my cases at a minimum are drug cases, if it's a drug issue, they're trying to get those parents help. They are working to help those parents get their kids back because that's their heart. They believe that's what they should be doing is helping in the reunification process in a DHS case. But if it turns out that that parent can't kick the drug or the domestic abusing boyfriend or whatever the issue is, and we go to termination, these are exactly the people that will want to enter into these
agreements. These are exactly the people that will treasure these agreements because it will allow them to have a framework that they can go by and a method through which they can unravel it if that's what needs to
happen. Representative Hudson. Could I follow up on
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
25:33
that? Oh, yes, please. Representative McKenzie, if it's the wording, you know, the genesis
of this bill is that the Georgia judges came up here and testified to the Judiciary Committee in October about open courts.
And that bill came through your committee and has been signed by the governor. We came to an agreement with the judges. But when they came, this was not on my radar screen, and they said, may we present on this. because it's the most exciting thing that's happened in our juvenile courts. And so they did, and they were the ones that got with VLR and wrote this legislation. And as far as the method that it's done, I don't care.
If anyone had ever suggested, we don't like this method, But if you want to change it to the method that Representative Penzo has in House Bill 1388, because no amendment has ever been suggested other than just don't
do it. So I would, you know, if this committee said we would rather do it that way, that's fine with me. The methodology doesn't matter. The fact that we have kids
that should obviously have contact with previous family and that we already have such agreements, they're not legalized in law, and why would we not want them legalized in law does not make any sense to me.
So I hope that is even a better answer to your question. Representative
Hudson, I think we have you queued up.
Representative Ashley Hudson
Unverified
27:20
Thank you. I want to go back to our discussion about birth relatives, and here's the concern I have. I work with providers who provide services to a lot of these kids in Arkansas, and I
volunteer with a lot of them, too. We're not talking about the Mayberries. We're talking about very difficult family situations, as you know. Now, I appreciated the discussion about how it terminates parental rights. I'm aware. But when you expand out this definition, and one thing I liked about Representative Penzo's bill is that it was tightly written.
It was a real tight, real solid bill. But when we start talking about birth relatives, that means that grandma, who may be part of the problem with mom's drug abuse, can jump over mom's head and enter into one of these agreements with the adoptive parent without mom's permission. It means that in a situation in which a relative is the toxic or bad actor, they don't have to have the birth mom or birth dad's permission. they can just go out and around them and make an agreement with the adoptive parents.
And that's a problem, too, I think, when we're expanding it. Secondly, I think that when we're talking about expanding the rights in this type of agreement out to other relatives other than the birth parents, we are creating a new subset of relatives who have more rights in these post-adoptive agreements than people do in regular divorces. We're talking about expanding the rights of grandparents and brothers and sisters and all sorts of other relatives to have contact and, in some cases, visits with these adopted children.
So how do we square the fact that we are opening up some particularly dangerous issues with relatives? One, because there are lots of good reasons, I can see, to limit this to mom and dad only. but two, where we are expanding the rights of relatives in these post-adoption agreements only in these adoptions that are more expanded than the rights that are offered to relatives in any other domestic relations sphere in Arkansas jurisprudence?
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
29:31
One, many states are doing this. Arkansas is not pioneering anything. And these major problems that have continued to be brought up are not there. And I'm not going to say there's not any problems. There's problems with
anything. What I have said is there are more problems in not doing it than there are problems in doing it. And what we're currently doing is ignoring how often that while we certainly have those situations where grandparents have been part of the problem,
and we also have problems, we
also have just as many situations where grandparents have been the only stable thing in that child's life. And I deal with
it. Somebody who has crusaded for relative placement, I know that relative placement's not always the best thing, but it's one of the first things that we should look at, not separating that child from that family if it can be avoided.
But, you know, as I look at grandparents that are desperate, because a lot of times they don't realize until we're getting down to TPR, they don't realize that they're about to lose this grandchild or they don't realize they're about to lose this niece or nephew from the extended family. But they also have the realization sometimes they're old, many times they're old, sometimes they're not healthy. And I have to question in my own mind, you know, can they take care of this child? And as Glenn has pointed out, a lot of times they've been in a foster relationship for some time.
A lot of times there is a relationship there. And so to not have the ability, because to say, should we not do it in numbers of cases? Yes. And that's what adoptive parents don't have to do it. and a judge does not have to allow it. But to not allow, not to allow it because there's some cases where you shouldn't when there are so many cases when you should,
it seems to definitely that we are not looking at the best interest for many children. Follow-up? Yes. Okay. And
Representative Ashley Hudson
Unverified
31:54
I think we're probably going to have to agree to disagree on that section. But I want to move down now to page 4, line 12. Explain to me what the rationale is in this section where we have created a situation in which the filing party pays all of the costs.
All reasonable costs and expenses of litigation and court-ordered mediation or other alternative dispute resolution shall be the responsibility of the party who files. So why are we creating a situation, again, unlike most domestic relations jurisprudence, in which one party bears everyone's costs as opposed to each party bearing their own? Glenn can probably answer that better
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
32:42
than me, but I will tell you, we're copying Georgia law where that was working in Georgia,
and I have no opinion on the legal aspects. So, Reverend
Speaker 38
32:56
Hudson, I have the same question, and for probably the same reasons.
Speaker 22
33:01
The Georgia judges told us two things. They told us that was the way that theirs worked. There's a provision in it that says that if the filing party prevails, then the fees can be reversed out. The second thing they told us that made sense to me was,
Of the 25 states in the United States that have these agreements, that was the mechanism that was utilized. It may well be that that's one of the reasons that there's so little dispute that goes up to the court level. I don't know the answer to that question. It'd be pure speculation. I can see where that might be the case. Um, as it pertains to my domestic relations practice, it is fair to say that very frequently
where every party is supposed to bear their own cost, that's not what actually transpires. I think you probably have a good idea of what I'm referring to. And, and so I'm not sure that I see this as greatly different than the practical reality of what happens in a domestic relations case. I wanted to go back and address one thing about how this creates a set of rights for folks that would be better or more available than in divorces. So this is by agreement.
It's not a Troxel issue. It's not something that the courts ordered an adoptive family to do. So if they want to make an agreement that would be better than the statutory allowances in a domestic relations case, they're certainly permitted to do that. For that matter, there's nothing in our domestic relations code that would prevent those two parties from entering into agreements as it pertains to relatives, family members. But
Speaker 30
34:46
if they agree to it, it's not a Troxel issue because it's not being imposed on them by the court.
It's their own agreement. One final follow-up, very quick. Let me put you
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
35:01
back in the queue. Representative Crawford. Thank you, Madam Chair. Would you agree that legislation would allow for biological parents to seek visitation, even if their parental rights were terminated by the courts due to abuse or neglect? I would. I
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
35:23
don't see a judge seeing that that is in the best interest of the child.
and that's the key part of the
law. Representative Hudson, if you will get back
in the queue. Okay. Seeing no additional questions, we have several people signed up to speak. We have is it John Tribble? Help me here.
John Tribble
Unverified
35:59
If you will come forward and you're signed up to speak for the bill. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is John Tribble. I'm an attorney here in Little Rock.
who specializes in adoptions albeit private adoptions not dhs cases i'll be very brief you've heard me i believe twice already number one i want to place my general support behind senate bill 167 because i believe the overarching issue of providing for open adoptions in arkansas is vital both for private adoptions and for department adoptions um i would like to address
one issue very quickly that i noticed in recent testimony regarding the issue of visitation i would like to make a comment and my interpretation of senate bill 167 in this regard does not differ from house bill 1388 representative crawford asked about whether and a birth parent could receive visitation even though their parental rights have been terminated and i would like to point out to the committee that the word visitation as is used in custody matters i believe that's what
representative crawford was referring to is substantively to a greater degree different than the kind of visitation we're talking about here this is not about unsupervised overnight visitation where the birth parents get the child back that discretion would be entirely up to the adoptive parents of course this is all voluntary i would say in most cases visitation in post adoption contact agreements would be more visiting an in-person visit where the birth parents see the
child together with the adoptive parents not that the birth parent runs off and of course i would like to reiterate it's going to be on a case-by-case basis it is voluntary but in those instances where where there are concerns about the child's best interest or where the facts are such that the birth parents are having such great life issues that they can't reasonably have contact with the children,
I wouldn't foresee these agreements going forward. But I would like to reiterate that in instances where a grandparent does have a substantive relationship with an 8- or 12-year-old child who is adopted through DHS, of course it would make sense to preserve that link, even if it's not a legal link, just to have contact with somebody that the child has grown up with. I can't imagine being cut off for whatever reason because of my parents' behavior being cut off from a relationship with my grandparents.
So I'll leave it at that. I just generally wanted to say that I feel it's very important for the state of Arkansas for the well-being of children to have this additional tool in the toolbox to be able to offer these agreements to children also in DHS adoptions I think Arkansas would be a much better state if we adopt it if there are any questions I'm happy to answer otherwise I'm finished representative Crawford
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
39:50
thank you madam chair you made this statement
that if this about it being voluntary
John Tribble
Unverified
40:00
need a law because the current law under arkansas code annotated 99502 does not prevent for any agreements or prevent for disclosing identities of the parties the current law mandates closed adoptions and many states according according to my research i believe it's 29 states uh have post-adoption contact agreements. Two-thirds of all private adoptions nationwide have them.
I don't know how many DHS adoptions do. It is important for the children to be able to have that assurance that they can have this contact, and studies show that the health outcomes for children, the mental and emotional health, is better when they have this contact, and studies show that typically adoptive parents end up being more satisfied having it and the birth families receive a benefit. It benefits all parties. So I don't see why we should
keep mandating closed adoptions in Arkansas when we can offer this tool and we are one of two states in the entire region that doesn't even address the issue in our legislature. I feel it's as important in department adoptions as it is private adoptions. Follow up. Briefly. Thank you. Is there
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
41:20
not a paternity register in Arkansas where that can be coordinated? Yes, but are you speaking of the putative father registry?
John Tribble
Unverified
41:33
Punitive, yes, for both. The putative father registry is merely where an alleged father can sign up on the registry to receive notice to an adoption. it guarantees no rights whatsoever the
Speaker 75
41:46
child can also sign up correct to a punitive father registry no it's just a punitive
Speaker 78
41:53
registry all right are you talking about the voluntary adoption registry so I
John Tribble
Unverified
42:07
would like to add for the record there is the availability of the voluntary adoption
registry i don't know if that's what representative crawford is speaking of where a birth parent may consent to being contacted by their children after the children reach the age of majority i don't recall if it's 18 or 21 right now but uh and the child may uh request to do that later on and may request their original birth certificate and seeing no additional
questions thank you for your testimony. Thank you, Madam Chair. Next, speaking for the bill, we have Montana Jones.
If you will introduce yourself to the
Montana Jones
Unverified
43:05
committee, please. Well, thank you for your time. My name is Montana Jones. I am one of the pastors of the Summit church in
Speaker 84
43:12
saline county and i am speaking here today in support of this bill i am an adoptive parent in currently in an open adoption that we are very blessed to have and we would not trade the relationship we have with my son's birth family for anything and we also my family
serves as foster family support for a number of families who've adopted through the foster system have had contact with birth families through that as well. And so some of the things why I believe, I strongly believe that PACAs are important for private adoption. I think they're just as important, if not more, when it comes to children who are adopted out of the foster system, really for a number of different reasons. First of all, they're beneficial to the adoptees. As has already
been alluded, studies after studies have shown that openness leads to better mental health in the long term for the adoptee. And so what PACAs will allow for is for adoptive families and to birth families, as I mentioned, voluntarily come together intentionally for the well-being of the long-term development of the child. And as has been mentioned, all of that lays in the hands of the adoptive parents to decide what's the best interest of for our child in this
and that may be where there's visits involved or it may just simply be where we can send pictures once a year so obviously coming out of the foster system there's a number of different situations that somebody could be faced with but what's one good thing about this bill is it allows for diversity and customization to meet the need at hand while also putting the health of the child first and foremost. It's also beneficial to the adoptive parents because it's going to bring clarity to this adoption process. I think there are sometimes questions about whether adoptive
parents want openness or not, and the vast majority, obviously I can't speak for all adoptive parents, but my wife and I do get to counsel and speak with lots of hopeful adoptive parents, and the vast majority of them desire openness because they have seen the health that it can ultimately produce, but they don't know exactly what it would look like or what they would be comfortable with, but they do desire it, and for a number of different reasons. Some reasons adoptive parents want openness is first and foremost, as we mentioned, it's for the health of the child.
They want to raise their child the healthiest way they can. This would allow them to make a plan to do that. They also, with a post-adoption contact agreement, when the child has openness throughout their life. The adoptive parents don't have to compete with the child fantasizing about what their birth family may or may not have actually been like. And so they get to see, hey, this is who your birth family is, and this is who they are, and this is how they love you, and all these different kinds of things. But as an adoptive parent, I don't have to compete with something
that may or may not be real as my son develops. It also gives the adoptive parents a way to give connection especially in foster where it's likely an older child that has been adopted to give them a connection to their identity to their past that they would otherwise not be able to do and then lastly it allows the adoptive parents to set the terms on what is actually openness look like the surprises down the road that can happen are a lot less likely to happen when pockets are involved because you get to set the standards and the expectations
up front and then hopefully people can continue to walk in that and we know that most adoptees who either are adopted out of the foster system or age out of the foster system will eventually make contact or try to make contact with their birth families. And so PACAs can allow the adoptive families to help set a framework for that to take place over a long period of time versus coming up on an 18th birthday or something like that. And it's also beneficial to the birth families. It allows families, whether that's through maybe it's
the parents or grandparents or relatives to ultimately have a vision for the future of this process that isn't just loss. And we all know that there's tons of loss experienced from the adoptee side to even the birth family sides when it comes to foster care and adoption through the foster system. And what this would allow is ultimately to be able to paint a picture of, hey, here's how you can care for your child long-term, ultimately, through these PACA agreements.
And so I believe that our adoptions will be better, they'll be more ethical, they'll be healthier in Arkansas, both privately and through DHS, if we will allow and set the framework for PACAs to be available. So thank you for your time, and if y'all do have any questions,
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
47:58
I'll be more than willing to try and
answer them. Representative Springer. Thank you, Madam Chair. good evening now. What is your understanding of, I'm kind of concerned like a representative
Hudson is, what's your understanding of the meaning of birth relative? Well,
Montana Jones
Unverified
48:17
while I can't speak to necessarily all the technicalities of that, from my understanding that would include
Speaker 84
48:23
grandparents, you know, I think that's probably the main picture in the idea, or grandparents or other relatives that may have a connection with, obviously, with the adoptee. And so what this would potentially allow for is that, let's say there's an eight-year-old
whose parental rights have been terminated in the foster care or their foster system for whatever reason, grandparents maybe they're elderly, that the judge sees, hey, they cannot care for this child long term. Well, currently, obviously, if that child was adopted through DHS that wasn't a relative adoption, then essentially that grandparent could lose all contact with that child. And also the child has lost all contact with one of the safest maybe people they've had in their moment.
So this would at least allow the framework for that to happen. But I know there's some concern about, obviously, we know that if a child has gotten to the point of adoption through DHS is an option that we understand that the situation has gotten incredibly messy and the goal of reunification with the birth parents is not possible. but as we've mentioned over and over again with the voluntariness of this is that the adoptive parents would still have the ability to discern what would that openness look like or do we want
that at all for one thing but what that openness would look like in the best interest of the child and so that may or may not so whether that could be a different relative that maybe pictures those kinds of things but the adoptive parents would still be able to discern and decide if that's something they want
to enter into or not enter into thank you so much thank you for
your testimony and we have from the Department of Human Services Anna Embo and director Misha Martin to offer some information about the bill I should have
said from the Department of Child and Family Services if
Speaker 95
50:32
you would just introduce yourself to the committee, please. Good afternoon. I'm Misha Martin. I'm
Speaker 96
50:37
the Director of Children and Family Services at DHS. And I am Anna Imbo. I'm the Attorney for
Speaker 95
50:42
the Division of Children and Family Services at DHS. And if you don't mind, Chair Lady Fite, I would like to start off and then turn it over to Anna. We're just here providing some additional information about the bill. We support the idea of having contact when appropriate between children and their families
post-adoption and as you've heard that can currently happen it's up to the adoptive parent whether they know the family whether they decide whether they can have that contact we did work with Senator Clark in in in saying maybe it's a good idea to have some parameters around what it means to have a post adoption agreement between family and between that child because like you've heard from several others contact is good and as you heard from represent Crawford, thank you. We are moving to a direction of where we really believe that children belong
with family when it's safe and appropriate. And as a division, we are pushing for subsidized guardianship when appropriate versus headed down the road of termination and cutting off all of those, the parental ties between the parent and the child if there's some other way that a child can achieve permanency and have safe, appropriate contact with the parent or the relative through subsidized guardianship but that's not always an option in these cases when it is a foster parent adoption we do have some concerns about there is a difference between a private adoption
and a dependency neglect adoption we have a we have a termination of parental rights and most of the time that is involuntary meaning we we put on a case and we prove that that parent is not fit Now, there's a whole long legal standard, but I'm going to use the short term. It's not fit, and we have to terminate those parental rights. That means it's not optional for that parent. Like, we have taken an adverse action, had a trial, and proven that parental rights had to be terminated so that we could find a permanent option of adoption for that child.
So that's very different than a private adoption where a parent is giving up their rights. We do have the option for a parent to sign away their consent or consent to termination. And so there is some concern with this post-adoption agreement that the post-adoption agreements could be used in a coercive manner to coerce a parent into agreeing to termination, knowing that they will have some contact. Again, I will fully admit that Senator Clark asked the Georgia judges, like, did this happen in Georgia?
You know, is it happening? And the Georgia folks said, no, it's not happening. But many of you know I'm an attorney. I represented DCFS before I became director. I have done hundreds, if not probably, sadly to say, thousands of terminations of parental rights over the years. And I'm very aware of what happens when it comes to negotiating and talking with parents about whether they are going to consent to termination or not. That conversation happens with their parent counsel, but I see this as a tool to encourage parents to say,
yes, I'll consent to termination because I'm going to get this post-adoption agreement. They will then have no control as to whether that will actually happen or not. So I want to reiterate again, I think that contact, even with expansion of families, is a good thing when the adoptive parent sees it as a good thing. There are just some concerns about the legalities of how this bill is written, and I'll turn it over to Anna to give you a little bit more about the legalities. So just a few issues, and I think some of
Speaker 96
54:13
the questions have touched on these, so I just want to make sure that you have a DHS perspective on this,
since this is talking about adoptions in the cases that... Yes. can't get any closer is that better okay so just so you to make sure that you hear our perspective on this with some of the issues that have been raised but just to one in particular especially the distinction that's been made between this bill and representative penzo's 1388 i think it's it's two different arenas one is the private adoption and one isn't but the reason why i think that the 1388 was more clear and definite in its terms and also just applied during this very
narrow window of time that's not going to apply in our cases and that this bill doesn't address. And so, in the private adoption context, it's only available after that birth parent consents to the adoption and then they have that time period to withdraw. And then after that, the adoption hearing will occur and a decree is entered. That's the only window of time in that bill that this adoption agreement can be made in this bill it it can be before the adoption it can be after the adoption so there's not that narrow window of time and and that sort of touches on
director martin's concern about the potential for coercion or undue influence or just kind of an imbalance of power in the other bill that that's sort of the even most even playing field that you can have if you're going to enter into this agreement this bill doesn't allow for that it can be before or after finalization. And if it's around the context of the termination, that's where there's some concern for coercion. In addition, I think the other bill also takes into consideration the, to make it fair, everyone has the benefit of counsel in 1388.
That will not be the case in this bill. And especially to touch on what Mr. Hoggard said, let me back up a little bit. So in these cases, the parents have counsel and DCFS have counsel, that's my staff. So we have attorneys all throughout the state who represent the agency in these cases. So represent the agency and the state removing a child from a home and potentially petitioning for the parent's rights to be terminated. If that happens and then we're going to an adoption, the benefit to adopting from foster
care is that the agency takes care of that. We take care of the home study, we get everything ready, and my staff will file that adoption petition on behalf of the adopting family foster family or relative depending on the case but we don't represent that family we nominate them this is a little technical but we nominate them as the petitioner so they're signing that petition on their own it's kind of like they're representing themselves pro se even though we do the legal work and it's all very standard and it works
but it's we don't represent them our duty is to the agency so they're not going to have the benefit of counsel in this situation and that's also a big distinction with the Georgia example that we were given and Senator Clark knows that this this did come up when we asked that that was my question to the Georgia judges what about counsel they provide it in Georgia so in Georgia the big difference is that those adoptive families have the benefit of counsel this bill doesn't provide for it and our system's not set up for it we'd have to think of some other way to ensure that if they're entering into this agreement that they have the benefit of counsel as they do in 1380
it as well. And just the very last thing, and especially because this was a concern I wanted to raise, but also because Representative McKenzie and Representative Hudson brought this up, but the enforcement piece, especially on when it talks about who's responsible for costs, it does say that the person who brings the petition for enforcement is responsible, but there's a very important word where it says unless on page four, line 15. That means that potentially, I think that the way that I see this, an example about why it's concerning, is that if the bio
parent brings an action to enforce an agreement that was entered into, they're responsible for the cost. Unless the court finds that the other party, in this case probably maybe the adoptive parent, was acting in bad faith, the court can order the adoptive parent to pay those costs. So they, you know, entered into this in good faith. It doesn't go well. The bio parent has the right to enforce but then the adoptive parent one might be subject to to not having their their desires as parents control so that sort of you know the enforcement part I think is there's some
speculation about whether that is really enforceable but even if it is they might still be on the hook for cost I think that part of it is concerning so I think those are the main things I just want to make sure the committee was aware of in addition to the what director Martin has brought up and I think
we will take questions for sure. I'm not seeing any questions thank you for your testimony and members ordinarily we go for against for against I did not realize we had
some people who had signed up online so we have judge Mike Medlock to speak against And Judge Medlock, if you would introduce yourself to the committee, please. May I have Judge Smith
Speaker 103
59:32
join me here, and I kind of tag-team this thing. Just a moment. Everybody okay? Okay. All
right. Yes, I'm sorry, would you repeat that, please?
Speaker 103
59:45
I'm going to have Judge Smith join me. I think
Speaker 107
59:49
we've got a tag team presentation here. Okay. Just for the committee's benefit, I'm Mike Medlock. I'm a circuit judge, you know, division 21st District, which is Crawford County. I'm Tom Smith, Penn County
Speaker 110
1:00:03
circuit judge at Pennville, Arkansas. Thank you for letting us speak to you today. It's up to
Speaker 112
1:00:12
you. And I want to thank Senator Clark and Representative Penzo.
I've had good discussions with them about what they're trying to do, what their bills are, and what they represent. And I'm here as a circuit judge to give you our formal issues on this bill in particular. I did not have a problem with Representative Penzo's bills that were privately agreed. Adoptions, in fact, I think I suggested, just to take away all my concern about it, If I knew the bio mom had a lawyer, I think I told you I think it'd be the perfect idea because you all have the policies to create.
You know, you just want those safeguards in place. The concern with this bill a little bit, though, is if it develops and if this is a policy you want to go to, I think there's still a lot more work to do with it. And I've had great discussions with Senator Clark and listened to the Georgia judges. so I'm not going to repeat everything you've already been told, but the rowdy of it is the state of Arkansas forced this situation because we had to take these children because of neglect and abuse. And so it's not the agreement like in Representative Penzo's bill
where two people come together of their own free will. The state of Arkansas started this situation because of neglect and abuse toward a child. That's a very important starting point. And so when we get to the point of termination, if we have to terminate we've already tried to rehabilitate that family we couldn't get there as the department told you we as judges if we have family members the presumptions are preferences are family we're trying to place with family if I if we're having to terminate
parental rights and we can't even do a guardianship with the family member that is another sign that we're past just a, this went smoothly type situation. And I appreciate some of the safeguards that have been placed in Senator Clark's bill. But the big issue here really though is DHS cases have a system. We have ad litems, we have multiple parent counsel, we have casters, we have foster parents,
we have relatives. Everybody to do this before we terminate rights, which would be a forced termination of parental rights, not an agreed termination, as in a private adoption, this is forced, then that element of having everybody represented is a key factor and is important. And Georgia does, the state of Georgia does pay to cover that safeguard. uh mr hoggard he represents the the bio parents typically in those cases so he has got to
represent them they would have a lawyer going into that agreement if we're going to take this on as a policy and i'm a firm believer you all set the policy and we try to enforce it if that's where we're going to go i just don't believe we're ready to do it today because we still are going to have to figure out how are we going to have fairness to where all the negotiations is going on before they present this agreement to the judge in a termination issue. If we were to take out any of this type of agreement before we terminated, and it was
strictly after we terminated, that may be a whole other set of issues we might look at as a new policy. But this bill is different as it is right now, and there's just not enough safeguards in place as we see it as the judges, and that's why we're still opposing it as it is. If we could continue to work on the issue and look at the pros and cons and ways to make it work, that is in the best interest of all the children. I'm more than willing to do that and continue to do that with Senator Clark and others that want to look at this.
But we had to start this situation because children were neglected. So if we're going to allow this type of contact, which as people have already told you, we're focusing on the contact being the rights of the new parents. We're hoping when they need that contact and it's in their best interest, that's happening. Typically, it probably is. But if we're going to get involved in this on the front end, we're probably going to have to look a little deeper at, Does everybody fully understand what they're signing, what they're getting into?
Because these children typically will have more traumas, will have more issues that got
Speaker 113
1:04:46
to be considered when they go into their grief. Andy, do you have anything to
Speaker 107
1:04:53
add to that? I'm going to go a little different direction than my colleague here in thinking about what you guys might be interested in. I think all of you kind of have an idea about what this proposed bill does and maybe what it doesn't do. And in thinking about this, the first words, the first thing that we're made to understand as judges is that when we're dealing with foster kids, the idea is permanency.
And the federal government's told us permanency means that they're back with a fit relative, the relative from which they were removed, possibly placed in a guardianship, or ultimately in an adoption within 12 months, sometimes 15 months. but permanency is the goal and the overriding principle that's in the juvenile code that pertains to the department human services and foster care the law has always been such that
as i understand it that adoptions are final and that means it's final in that new parents now have new kids and that's their parents and whatever rights that they had before that with other parents, other relatives, are terminated. So this act pretty much would change that and send us in a different direction. And there's probably some good arguments that you've heard about why that should be done. As my colleague here said, Judge Smith said, there was also some arguments about why we're not really ready to do that to take care of all the issues that come up.
I think Representative McKenzie over here mentioned the first thing that came to mind when you read this act is that you're now linking the adoptive parents to some relative be it a bio relative or any relative in the act the way the act's written to the potential for litigation and initially before the amendment that was for 14 to 17 so let's say four years or three years and now we're talking about 17 years with the amendment so they're they're tied together the same as a couple
that's married they're tied together for a long time here to have to deal with what they're going to do when they go to court and they're not going to have a paid lawyer when they go back to court when they come back to see us they're not going to have that paid lawyer if they had one at all the other thing which I think struck me first when I read the act was we deal with parents that are being terminated and we deal with anxious adoptive parents. Anxious adoptive parents are
likely to agree to about anything, especially when it comes to a baby or a small child. They're easily influenced, they're easily, you know, going to be told to agree to this and, you know, maybe things will go better, it'll be okay. I think we take a real huge risk with that the way we are now because, as everybody says, they're not going to have any counsel. They're not going to have an attorney. As one of you mentioned, I mean, it's going to be hard for an attorney to tell them to enter into an agreement like this.
So not having an attorney, anxious to agree, those are all problems, I think. And we're not in a position to tell them they should or shouldn't do that. And that creates a bigger problem for what happens down the road. and keep in mind that we're dealing with parents terminated parents that have been terminated because they're unfit you know this is not a situation that hasn't been looked at for a period of many months typically most director martin will tell you that i'm not a 12-month guy i'm
usually a 15-month guy so i'll give them lots of chances i give them every chance to succeed and i'm talking about the parents the biological parents but usually when they're terminated and they're at termination you know they've had all those opportunities and so we're not talking about a situation where if you're thinking about having an agreement with someone this is not the ideal scenario now I'll admit what Senator Clark said there are parents there are grand I'm sorry there are grandparents and relatives that are proper and appropriate for contact and or visitation
But I'm going to tell you, in my length of time on the bench, we have the best director we've ever had who's tried to fix all those issues, and we frankly fixed that issue with Senator Clark recently by opening up our courts and making sure that we're letting all of those interested parties in, we're letting those grandparents in, we're making sure they don't wait outside, we're making sure they can come into our court and they can make themselves known to the court. And so we solved that problem, and we're willing to do that in the appropriate way.
So we took care of that. The other thing, and everybody's talked about this, I don't know that Attorney Hoggard's in a position to draft these agreements even if they were proposed. And even if they were, again, you don't have somebody to represent adopting parents to look at an agreement. so we really haven't taken care of that issue either last thing I want to point out is there's some language in here I don't I'm not sure that I think it's section b and I'm not sure what's
page two section b that says a child who is this is b3 a child who is being adopted and an adopting parent and a birth parent of the child who is being adopted and this language deals with the persons who may voluntarily enter into a post-adoption contact agreement and there's two paragraphs three and four that deal with that and it seems to me that that's that's certainly a big
issue because I don't think a child has contracting authority because they're not an adult and I don't know what's intended by that language but I would suggest to you that at a minimum that makes this this proposed bill a little overbroad in what it's trying to do here and what they're trying to cover. I don't, it's hard for me to understand what that means, but a child can't enter to a contract, yet it presupposes maybe that you have a 13 or 14 or 15 year old kid that says,
you know, I want to have this relationship and maybe gives them some sort of rights, which I don't think they have legally. So for those reasons and all those articulated my Judge Smith, we oppose the bill. Any
questions? I'm not seeing questions. Yes, I am now. Representative Clown. Thank you, Madam
Speaker 117
1:11:46
Chair. Thank you, Judge. In your comments, you mentioned that basically you've
Representative Joe Cloud
Unverified
1:11:52
opened your court to the grandparents and they can come in and be recognized and all of that.
And then we've heard testimony that previously they might not have any rights. So even though you allow them to come in with a, quote, closed adoption, unquote, do they have any rights for that child and visitation or anything like that in the future? I think we're kind of mixing
Speaker 107
1:12:20
maybe our comparisons. and what Senator Clark was talking about is this case had preceded a
termination without grandparents ever having the chance to be involved and so what we've attempted to do with this basically the change the act which kept our courts closed and they are still closed but now we're allowing other individuals including grandparents and interested parties that the court would approved to come in and be involved in a case before it reaches the adoption slash termination process. So I guess to answer your question, if we're at termination, it's probably too late.
What we've attempted to do with the change in that act is let them get involved and let us know about them before we get to termination. And that's what we're trying to do, which I think that's what Senator Clark was trying to get to with the problem he had is that these grandparents were never allowed to be a part of it and so we attempted to fix that with this and i think the acts already passed in fact so you know we're working in the right direction i think and trying trying to resolve that but that's just so we're not leaving anybody out and uh we've had this
discussion at length there's been that situation where some people were not allowed in some people we didn't even know we're outside that weren't allowed to come in our court and we fixed that we
Speaker 116
1:13:48
think so i hope that kind of answers your question thank
Speaker 110
1:13:52
you and go along with that too real quick i think it's changed so much now that if we find
Speaker 112
1:13:58
that families are not the first look to get these children i'll be stumped the department's made a focus on it judges made
focus on it we've added more bills to make sure that knowledge is there and the reality is it's starting at probable cause hearings on day one we are asking is there a fit family member anywhere so we're finding them if they're there that's why when we get there uh by the time you get to terminate if we're not already with the family member something's already going to ride next all right thank you for your testimony thank you that's the end of our witnesses
senator clark would you like to close for your bill
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:14:58
thank you madam chair thank you committee I am one of Director of Martin's biggest fans, and those were two of my favorite judges.
And I think you should listen to a lot of what they had to say. And you should especially listen to what Judge Medlock said when he said, I will admit that there are a lot of grandparents and relatives that would be good to have contact going forward. We do have a bill that will go, a law that will go into effect 90 days
after April 30th, that will open the courts up a great deal. It's not open courts. And I'm glad that the judges lock it. And I'm not surprised these two judges lock it because again they're they're two of my favorites are they're two of the best um but i want to remind you the judges didn't bring it for all the they they talked about how we miss you know that families weren't in there and they didn't know families were in there weren't in there judges didn't bring you that bill i brought you that bill and they talked about how that they're they're making sure
that we're or at least one judge is making sure that we're that we're trying to find relatives They didn't bring you a bill that said that we needed to go for relative custody. I brought you that bill. I wish that we had a lot more proactive. 29 states have post-adoption contact agreements. We're not building roller coasters for the first time. Roller coasters are scary.
People can fall off and die. Bungee jumping is scary. I love roller coasters. I love bungee jumping. Don't like running legislation so much, and we always get this fear factor, but 29 states have post-adoption contact agreements. This one is copied after one that's doing it successfully. Two of those states, Texas and Louisiana, have post-adoption contact agreements for only DHS adoptions.
and while I appreciate the suggestions today you know I haven't lobbied you on this bill and I didn't run this bill for weeks I didn't run this bill for months because there were judges who said they wanted to testify against it and Senate committee and I waited and I waited and I waited and then finally I ran it because they decided that they would rather testify against it here The, uh, Director Martin talked about the fear of, and I think that's genuine, of people being coerced, of somebody who's facing a TPR, termination of parental rights, being coerced, and this bill being used.
she would also tell you if questioned
that they're already coerced we already tell people that if you agree to this termination of parental rights if you do it voluntarily and you have another child it can't be used against you to take future children but if you don't agree to it then that's on your record
and we can and that's a big strike against you for us to come take
uh future children whether you do anything or not so they're already coerced uh they're not going to be any worse coerced uh because of this bill this that's and that's not a problem again in 29 states that's been brought up uh the the agreements happen they should happen And the most important thing, like I said, is they mentioned all these things that perhaps we could change.
But in our first discussion, a judge from Saline County on Zoom says, I'm here to tell you that the juvenile judges are adamantly opposed to this bill. And I said, well, why are you adamantly opposed to this bill? Well, we're adamantly opposed to this bill. And then I asked another question. we're adamantly opposed to this bill and what well we're adamantly opposed to this bill can you can we discuss this well we're adamantly opposed to this bill now thankfully i gotta tell you judge smith is one of the best to go back and forth with and judge matlock is is right there with
him but but that's what we wouldn't have had any discussion if i had not week after week continued to push the discussion because that's where we were we're adamantly opposed to the bill there was no changes, there was no if you did this, there was no if you did that it's we're just adamant opposed to the bill because anybody who knows me and anybody that knows how I work I mean the bill with the not open courts but we're opening them up a lot is because I said okay what can we
agree on, what can we do so there was nothing offered it sounds all reasonable here today but there was nothing offered but we have the second BCFS case I was involved in after the Stanley kids were taken and kept for 90 to 120 days and shouldn't have been a couple not much older than me now
contacted me from here in Pulaski County and they came and sent my office and they asked for my help and they said our son was on drugs and he and he and his wife were neglecting their kids and we kept trying to do something about it and we couldn't do anything and we couldn't get anybody to do anything and finally after six months we got the police or sheriff to go out
and they went out and took DCFS with them and finally they took the kids and that's the last time we ever saw our grandchildren and he said I'm a retired tire store manager I've never had a parking ticket I'm in good health but we were told we couldn't have custody interim custody because we were too old and
he said we would like to at least know if the kids are okay and if they've been
adopted. And I said, keep in mind, I said, I can find out anything, but I'm limited in what I can tell you. But I can tell you
if they're okay or if they've been adopted. I found, I called, I found out where they were, found out that they were probably going to be adopted within 30 days to a nice young couple. And I was able to call them back. And I can't, you know, I always come close to breaking talk about that story
because I think about my own parents. and how heartbroken they would be. And another reason, as much as I love Misha, that I say, if you can avoid calling the agency, don't call the agency. And they're so much better. And so many of our judges are so different from that one. But nevertheless, I think about that couple. Not some of these worst case scenarios.
And then I've had, you know, my daughter's girlfriend, who is very serious about and we like a lot, is adopted. And she's been raised in an open adoption. And I've really enjoyed our conversations. And she would not understand her learning disabilities if she did not know her bio parents. and she would not, as one of the witnesses said,
she would not understand how blessed she was to have been adopted if she didn't know her Bible parents. Again, it's not a DHS adoption. It was a voluntary adoption. But there are so many things positive, but the most important thing is page 3, lines 21 through 24 the court shall enter an order to enforce a post-adoption contact agreement
if the court finds by preponderance of the evidence that the enforcement of termination of the post-adoption contact agreement is in the best interest of the child if judge smith finds that because of all these things he's mentioned that it can't that one of these adoptions can't post adoption agreements can't possibly be in the best interest of the child then he would never do one but if he comes across as he said I will admit that there are
grandparents and relatives that would be good to have contact he comes across one of those he says That would be in the best interest of the child. He would have the ability to say, I think we should do that. Never has to do one. Not one judge ever has to do it ever. There's really no real danger with as good of judges as we have of the roller coaster running off the tracks and everybody being killed.
of the bungee cord breaking because we have the judges right there to make sure that it's in the best interest of the child. Too often, though, I get really angry, and those who work with me behind the scenes know I get angry when we talk about the best interest of the child because it's really not that. It's about the best interest of the system. And that's what you heard more about is it doesn't fit into our box. It doesn't work, you know, we don't know all of this, we don't know this, because we know that it's in the best interest of some families and some children to have a post-adoption contact agreement and not to have ever adoption closed.
And I would appreciate you passing this on to the House floor and, you know, passing this and then allowing that there be one judge in this state and one far
corner that wants to do one adoption for one child and one grandmother that they can. And with that, I'd ask you for a good vote.
What is the will of the committee? Oh, excuse me. It's time for discussion. I forgot that. No, we have the motion and then we'll discuss. Boy, it's been a long day. What is the will of the committee?
I'll make a motion do pass as amended. And now is the
Speaker 5
1:26:52
time for discussion. Representative Mayberry, push your button, please. okay
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:26:58
now we've got you i guess i just kind of want to ask if there's there were some suggestions that were made by dhs some ideas and you know are
is there a way to and i didn't write them down i'm sorry i should have as they were saying some things is there is there anything that maybe you'd be willing to adjust in here and bring back an amendment that would be more palatable am i am i allowed i know this is discussion among us. I don't know if I'm allowed to ask him this question at the end, if that's improper. No, that's
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:27:32
fine. Representative Mayberry, I have always been open. You know, the question that I would have, that I ask people when I'm on the committee is, did you bring an amendment?
Not to me, but to them. Because yes, I've been open all the time. I can't tell you that I'm hopeful that I would bring an amendment back because I've not seen any, you know, everything looked like, you know, well, it sounds good, and if we just did this and did that, but I've not seen any of that, anything that would suggest that we would have an amendment, but I would love it because, again, they're smart people, they're good people, and this is something we need to do, and I'm always open to their ideas.
Representative Rick McClure
Unverified
1:28:17
Representative McClure. If I understand correctly, this does not prohibit the judges from doing anything that they're not already doing, but it gives them the opportunity to do something else. So I think this is probably a good idea. They don't have to use it. It doesn't change what they're necessarily doing. It just gives them additional options, and I will always default to what's best for the child. And if there is a grandparent or whoever in that family, this gives them the opportunity to be a part of it.
Speaker 135
1:28:54
So I think this is a good idea. Representative McKenzie. Thank you,
Representative Gayla H. McKenzie
Unverified
1:29:07
Madam Chair. I'm just not there yet. I am concerned about the lack of attorney for the adoptive parents. and with the judge, yes, they have to oversee and protect the rights and interests of the child, but they cannot advocate for the adoptive parents.
And so, as I mentioned, I'm concerned. I think adoptive parents in this situation do need counsel that's there just to advocate for them and at least point out an option that you can still do this. there's another way but at least point out this is what may happen to you and just just walk them through it and show them if this goes wrong this is potential trouble for you you may have to pay some attorney's fees you may have
some litigation costs coming down the road and at least point out and advocate for them it's I will say that I have really learned a lot and have a much greater appreciation for open adoptions and the understanding of these issues and like I said I went from not liking Representative Penzo's bill to happy about it and that's my concern is just I look at the perspective if I'm advising an adoptive parent right now as this is I would tell them no
and that's where I am today is I would like to see some changes and I apologize I should have gotten with you beforehand. But that's where I am today. If we can get, as we talked, you mentioned, you referenced already, if we can get to where we are maybe with that other bill, I certainly see some
Representative Ashley Hudson
Unverified
1:30:52
good in this. Representative Hudson. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I really,
I think I'm echoing mostly what Representatives Mayberry and McKenzie said. I, you know, one of the things that I really appreciate about Representative
Penzo's bill was that they took it back and did some more work and came back with a stronger and better bill that I think will actually be workable. And my concern in this case is that this bill is not workable. Now, Senator Clark, I understand how frustrating it is when stakeholders are not providing anything other than we don't like it. I get it. But I don't think that it makes sense, even in that frustration, to shoehorn in a bill that has issues like this. I think that Representative McKenzie's comment about the issue of not having an attorney and not understanding
is a serious one. If we have one party who is not represented and they're being asked to sign an agreement, a contract, where the other party is, there's a real power differential that I'm concerned about. And I know that it's the type of procedural stuff that people don't like to hear from lawyers, but I do have some concerns about this fee shifting that moves us away from the American model into something completely different. I think whenever we start changing very basic tenets of our jurisprudence, we run into the risk of creating issues elsewhere. It's the chaos theory
where you make a little change here and the rest of it goes out. But really, that's not my most present concern. I really think that there are some things that could be improved. I'd be happy to sit down and see if we could come up with some ideas. But I just think as it is right now, there are too many questions and there are too many concerns I have that something with a good heart and a good spirit behind it could end up doing some unintended consequences to someone who didn't mean for a bad thing to happen. So I'll be a no on this.
Seeing no further discussion, all in favor say aye. All opposed say no. No. Then those have it, the bill fails thank you madam chair next we have oh for the audience and for members as well we will not be hearing Senate bill 589 today senator Ballinger asked us if we would move that to Monday and next we have House bill 1850 by representative fielding thank you for your patience in
waiting and I need to ask our vice chair to take the chair for just a few moments while I return the important call okay representative fielding you
Speaker 141
1:33:52
recognize to present your bill. Thank you, Madam Chair. This evening, I have House
Representative David Fielding
Unverified
1:34:00
Bill 1850, and it's a bill I classified as a common sense bill. What this bill will do, it will, when a person is incarcerated, it will stop your child from occurring while you're incarcerated. And also, Madam Chair, I'd like for my guest to introduce herself, and she will be presenting the bill.
Latanya Austin
Unverified
1:34:29
Okay. Good evening. My name is LaTanya Austin. Always forget that. Good evening. My name is LaTanya Austin Honorable, and I'm a practicing attorney across the state. I've
Speaker 147
1:34:42
been doing that for 19 years, and the bulk of my practice now with the Austin Law Firm has been domestic relations work. along with some other areas and I'm here to speak in support of this bill 1850 and would you like me to go ahead and outline so there are some key ways I
want to kind of couch this in terms of understanding what this bill does and that is looking at the intent the issues the implementation and the impact so the intent of this bill is to help prevent those parents who are obligated to pay child support from being saddled with a large judgment upon them leaving incarceration for a period that exceeds 90 days and that's the bottom line and
as representative fielding has said it's a common-sense bill the issues that are presented are the best interests of the child but also the best positioning of the parent in terms of being able to continue to provide for the child financially as well as to hopefully help decrease their risk of criminal charges for non-support payments as well as pickup orders and civil orders that
would result in further incarceration and further financial costs and obligations in terms of litigating that issue. The implementation that is provided by this bill is that the obligor who would be the incarcerated parent would file a motion with the court. They would be required to notify the other parent as well as the Office of Child Support Enforcement when they file that motion and they must do that pursuant to Rule 5 of the Rules of Civil Procedure.
there would be a hearing on the motion or the court would have the option of ruling on the pleadings and after 90 days of the release then the obligor would resume making those payments the impact of this bill balances the needs of the child in terms of financial support but it also addresses the positioning of the parent to be able to provide that continued support without having to deal with again the threat of incarceration the threat of additional
financial obligations and litigating the issue it would help to decrease and those felony non-support payments or those felony non-support cases where cases could be brought by the prosecuting attorney for non-support but it would increase the chances that the parent who has been incarcerated and is released would have a chance to get reintegrated into society would be able to seek further employment and to position himself or herself to be able to be
productive and to do so without threat of incarceration or you know being saddled with such a large monetary judgment and so those are the four areas that I would challenge you to look at in terms of supporting this bill and in a due pass on this bill and it's relatively short and straightforward and I'm happy to entertain any questions members do you have any questions
seeing none thank you for your testimony thank you we have some audience members signed up Barbara Williams to speak against the bill did you wish to come together okay Barbara Williams is it Terry Hayes all right come forward and please introduce yourselves to the committee
You're not on, there you go, and you may need to pull it forward a bit. Thank
Speaker 148
1:39:21
you. Williams with DFA also child support enforcement good evening I'm Terry Hayes
Speaker 151
1:39:36
enforcement thank you madam chair our concerns and we visited with a representative fielding a couple of times and he's been very gracious to hear our concerns but our just a general statement to start with and then some very specific concerns that we have with the text of the bill. First, I want to start off by explaining that current law already provides the ability and the main goal that I believe Representative Fielding is trying
to achieve, and that is to permit those parents who are incarcerated for a length of time to, if it's appropriate, and ordered by a court to reduce their child support obligation and perhaps avoid being released from prison with an overwhelming death that they have no chance of paying. So again, that ability is already in current law. And then going forward, there's a couple of points of sections in the bill
that conflict with existing law, and one in particular that could potentially jeopardize the federal funding that the child support program receives as well as funding for the TANF block grant specifically in section two this bill would add new language to Arkansas code annotated 914 234 C currently within that same section at paragraph B and paragraph C 1 the language currently reads that a court may not order that may may not modify an order
that has accrued child support prior to the date of a filing of a motion So that would be if you want to either increase or decrease your child's court obligation it can't go that change can't be prior to that data filing this bill would add a new syrup subparagraph at C to a providing just the opposite that a court may modify it in order that has accrued and paid support so therefore you've got that conflict that there's no way to harmonize that and this brings in that possibility
of modifying retroactively prior to that data filing that I mentioned earlier. Now the bill is concerned mostly with those incarcerated individuals, but this change to this section would apply to all child support orders and all child support cases that our office handles as well as those involving the private bar that never come through our doors. Now when the bill was originally filed, it had language that would permit child support
to be abated as of the date the parent was first incarcerated and that would go back in time, potentially could go back in time. And that language was deleted in the Second Amendment and again, I appreciate Representative Fielding hearing our concerns about that. However, Section 2 retains that language, abrogating that general rule that prohibits a retroactive modification of support. And that is important and because one of the federal regulations that governs the child support programs both here in Arkansas and across the country
is that states must have laws that prohibit exactly that, prohibit retroactive modification. And that's as a condition of having an approved child support plan, which gives us our funding, which in the next coming year is going to be about $38.5 million. Additionally, in order to be eligible for funding of the TANF block grant, the state must have an approved child support plan. So if this were passed and the federal government
declined to or disapproved our state child support enforcement plan, then there would be the potential of losing both the funding for the program as well as the TANF block grant. So that's an important point that obviously we're very concerned about. And going further from there, there's a second conflict with existing law in the definitions in Section 3. In this bill, incarcerated is defined as that 90 days period of incarceration that Ms. Honorable
referenced. Current law at Arkansas Code Annotated 914-107 provides guidance to the courts regarding in kind of the framework for when it's appropriate to modify an ongoing child support obligation and then that section incarceration is defined to mean a sentence of confinement of at least 180 days so that gets you up to that six months in terms of when it might be appropriate for an individual to seek to modify their prospect of child support obligation you know as a practical
matter we're talking about somebody who's going to be incarcerated for nine days that's probably talking somebody who's going to be in the county jail and by the time you know that time frame is so short by the time the petition is filed served on the other party set for hearing in many if not most cases that individual is going to be eligible for release in would it would not really benefit from this we believe that the existing law provides a more reasonable time frame before a parent who's incarcerated is eligible to seek a
reduction his or her child support obligation I mean it allows the courts to have all the discretion to examine circumstances of that pay your parent as well as the child and of the custodial parent and determine whether or not a reduction in support is appropriate and I'm happy to take any questions I'm not
seeing any questions. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry.
We do have one. Representative Springer just showed up.
No question? All right. Fielding will do a closing. Thank you for
Speaker 158
1:46:03
your testimony. Representative Fielding, are you ready to close
Representative David Fielding
Unverified
1:46:06
for your bill? Yes, ma'am. I'm ready. You know, this is not my first rodeo with this bill.
I have met with child support enforcement and tried to my best to accommodate the requests that they had with this bill. And those old amendments, and I felt that I did that. I also got the work with the Judiciary Council.
They had a problem with the bill initially. I did that. The Judiciary Council now is neutral on this bill. You know, it sounds as if child support wouldn't mean to just take the bill and throw it away. With their demands, there was one, and that's what I would have to do. This bill, I told you, is a common sense bill. They talked about the tenant fund, what might be. The tenant fund is a federal program.
A state cannot dictate or say what the federal is going to do. This is a state. That's the federal. So we don't know what might happen. So this bill, as I said, is a common sense bill. So all this bill does, it will do, is to stop child support when I'm not working. If I'm working, yes, you need to pay child support. You go into jail paying $1,000 or $2,000.
When you get out, you start back paying after 90 days. 90 days, get yourself back together. After you get yourself back together 90 days, you are starting to pay that child support. So it's common sense. It's just a common sense. And I ask you, committee, to please pass a do pass on a common sense bill. Thank you. What is the will of the committee?
Representative Springer. We have a motion do pass. Okay, now it's time for discussion. Any member have an item for discussion? I'm seeing none. We'll take the vote on the bill then. All in favor, say aye. Opposed, say no. then those have it the bill fails our final bill for today is House bill 1894
Speaker 164
1:48:59
representative Barker Thank you madam chair with your permission may I have thank you um Sylvester
Smith join me at the table yes please introduce yourself to
Speaker 166
1:49:22
the committee good afternoon madam chair committee members my name is Sylvester Smith I'm a local attorney good to see
Speaker 164
1:49:30
you all again i am going to keep my comments very brief not only because it's almost six o'clock but also
Sylvester Smith
Unverified
1:49:36
because this good bill is the brainchild of mr smith so i would rather you hear from him than for me but i do have a couple of things i'd like to say first of all yes this is a task force bill but before you write it off let me tell you why it's an exceptional and a unique task force bill first of all because of its noble and necessary purpose of course to work to end child abuse but also because it's a task force bill that will not cost the state money and I'm gonna let that was his idea I'm gonna let him explain that
further and elaborate on that I also want to make it clear that this bill is not coming to you in any way to imply that our CACs our child advocacy centers are not doing a good job they are doing a phenomenal job but we know how overwhelming the issue of child abuse is and the pandemic did not help things and that's that's all I'm gonna say on that this bill does come before you because quite frankly you cannot have too many eyes ears hearts and minds
working to eliminate child abuse and so that's my perspective and I will let Sylvester take it from there.
Speaker 167
1:50:51
Child abuse is arguably the greatest human stain in our society. It is a singular purpose that we should all share to eradicate it and so today Representative Barker and Senator Davis and I bring you a bill that is a zero-cost important
Speaker 170
1:51:09
step to meet that noble purpose and I
have to say this isn't anything anyone's paid me to do. This came from my family. My mother was the victim of child neglect. She woke up home alone on an evening at the age of eight years old where there was no food and no adult in the house and her and her older sister had to walk a half a mile to my great grandmother's house to find safety. My sweet grandmother was a delightful lady but she was going through some things. This comes from an episode where I as an attorney encountered a sweet young girl who at the age of 10 had been sold for sex by her mother
in order to procure drugs. And so we all know the horrors of human trafficking. We all have heard the tales of the child being abused in McDonald's restroom. But the truth of the matter, ladies and gentlemen, is that the real monsters are not under the bed. The real monsters sleep down the hall. And so the question before us, the question that is your responsibility, I believe, to answer, is how do we get some visibility into these households to find out what's going on with these families and do it in a way that's not intrusive or abusive to good, hard-working families that are just trying to do the right thing?
And so, Representative Barker and I got together and we conceptualized this idea to do a Arkansas moonshot, if you will, when it comes to eradicating child abuse. Let's put some of the best and brightest minds who care for children in the room together. Let them spend a year working together, debating these issues, debating these challenges, looking at other policies in the world that have worked. And let's see if we can't come up with some grand ideas here. this task force is very unique in that it's not just the usual suspects although
the work the usual suspects are doing is important and it's moving us down the field but it asks that we put people in the room like child pediatricians school nurses school counselors with a member of this committee with a member of your cohort committee in the Senate and and let's come together and really look at this and the nuts and bolts of it and try to come up with some some grand ideas and proposals that would then be presented in a year to this committee and again your cohort committee in the senate and hopefully some grand policy ideas will come from and if not you know
if we look up last year the last quarter of 2020 there were nearly 6,000 cases of child abuse in our state between 2015 and 2017 the child abuse hotline relief received 10,000 allegations of child's sexual abuse. And so if all this group can do is come up with some new ideas that eliminate one of those claims, saves one's child life, one child's life from experiencing this type
of pain, then I think it would be worth it. And so with that, we ask you to create this group to help you come up with some grand ideas at zero cost to the state. These task force members will serve 100 percent volunteer no gas reimbursement they're going to be encouraged to work via zoom and they will be staffed by the uams commission on violence and child abuse prevention and they're neutral on this bill i picked them because they are a state agency that has a mission that that
works with this and we need somebody to staff it where no one has to come up with new dollars to pay for it but that's all they'll do
Speaker 167
1:54:53
is provide staffing to draft the reporting and organize and still take the meetings and so it with the chair woman's pleasure if members have questions
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:55:05
I'd be honored to answer representative Springer thank you madam chair and good afternoon attorney Smith I think it's a good bill I like what you all are planning to do but my question
is why are you limiting this to a year it seems to me if you want to get real data and and make a true evaluation and assessment you need more than one year why are you limiting it to one year well I think that's
Speaker 167
1:55:31
a great question I believe that I don't know remember many members of the committee know this I spent five years in the Huckabee administration and so I when I walked in took the oath of trying not to grow government and the I'm concerned that if
if we make it too long, too big, that there will be legitimate questions and concerns that we're growing government. And I think a lot of the members here came here saying that they were going to shrink government. And so in response to that concern, we're starting with a year, but there'd be nothing to stop this committee from expanding it further after that term. Yes. Got you.
okay let's try that again don't touch it just a moment all right I'm
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:56:22
not suggesting that you grow the committee I'm suggesting that you collect data in order to make sure that you have the root cause of the problems and be able to make assessments and evaluations not necessarily to grow or the committee but to make sure that you have real data that you can utilize to make true and and make recommendations that are going to address the problem thank you very much representative Hudson thank you madam chair and thank you both for
Representative Ashley Hudson
Unverified
1:56:52
bringing this I think it's a great idea
my one question though is about the funding through the UAMS victims board that's supposed to be staffing I guess not funding staffing my recollection is that when we passed the bill to shift the state funding from the UAMS Commission to the CICs directly is that that UAMS Commission no longer has funding and may no longer have staffing
are we certain that it will still exist to
Speaker 167
1:57:29
assist with this yes ma'am I have confirmed with the director that they will have staffing and they will be able able to provide this assistance. No one's told me anything to the contrary and I also spoke to Maurice Rixby who's one of the vice presidents of UAMS and again I want to be very clear they're neutral on this but he does believe that he assured me that if this act passes they
Speaker 170
1:57:51
will be able to provide the support. If I might add
some clarification there since that was that was
my bill all we did was move the children's advocacy centers out from under them and the multidisciplinary teams they
are still fully staffed fully in effect and we took no funding from them other than that for the children's advocacy centers
I had a question since this will all be volunteers how will we get people from all over the state because it's going to be difficult to get people to leave their jobs and drive to Little Rock and meet with this commit with this task
task force when they receive no compensation whatsoever no mileage
Speaker 166
1:58:36
no per diem I think that's a very good question in one line of the bill
Speaker 167
1:58:41
and I can't remember which one madam chair we encourage the UAMS Commission to facilitate these meetings virtually and so we encourage them to use zoom and other platforms that way we won't have that transportation issue because a meeting like this should be able to be done in an hour two to three hours at most. But I recognize if you're coming from Fayetteville, you're going to spend three hours
driving, six hours round trip. And so a three-hour meeting, that's a big commitment. But if you can just do it via Zoom and you can do it from your home or from your office, then you eliminate that hurdle. But I can tell you, much like the members of this committee who are all passionate about children, we won't have a hard time finding 19 Arkansans who care enough
Speaker 173
1:59:24
about our kids to step up and do this especially if we mitigate that travel issue and it's
Sylvester Smith
Unverified
1:59:33
just to add to that it is page 2 line 21 the task force may meet using a digital
platform okay thank you I overlooked that so it's it's a choice either in person or virtually
Speaker 10
1:59:48
all right any other questions from the committee would you like
Sylvester Smith
Unverified
1:59:54
to close for your bill yes I am closed and ready to go home and would make a motion do pass all in favor
say aye opposed say no and the bill has passed were you voting on the bill or to go home just kidding thank you madam chair thank you committee members we will be meeting Monday we have a
senator Ballinger's bill and we may have others coming from the Senate I checked and we didn't have any as of today.
Speaker 176
2:00:24
Just a moment. Be watching your emails closely
because we may have a time change. Education is going to be meeting in the afternoon, so we may be meeting Monday morning. So when you get that email, be sure and look at that time. And we are adjourned.
Agenda
REGULAR AGENDA
DEFERRED BILLS
HB1500 C. Fite TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING THE PROPERTY TAX EXEMPTION FOR DISABLED VETERANS, THEIR SURVIVING SPOUSES, AND THEIR MINOR DEPENDENT CHILDREN; AND TO CLARIFY THE REQUIREMENTS TO ESTABLISH ELIGIBILITY FOR THE EXEMPTION.
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| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — AGING, CHILDREN AND YOUTH, LEGISLATIVE & MILITARY AFFAIRS- HOUSE, Apr 14, 2021 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Representative Charlene Fite Chair
Unverified
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
Glenn Hoggard
Unverified
Speaker 10
Speaker 19
Speaker 22
Speaker 30
Speaker 21
Representative Ashley Hudson
Unverified
Speaker 38
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
Speaker 50
Representative Gayla H. McKenzie
Unverified
John Tribble
Unverified
Speaker 48
Speaker 75
Speaker 78
Montana Jones
Unverified
Speaker 84
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
Speaker 95
Speaker 96
Speaker 103
Speaker 107
Speaker 110
Speaker 112
Speaker 113
Speaker 117
Representative Joe Cloud
Unverified
Speaker 116
Speaker 5
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
Representative Rick McClure
Unverified
Speaker 135
Speaker 141
Representative David Fielding
Unverified
Latanya Austin
Unverified
Speaker 147
Speaker 148
Speaker 150
Speaker 151
Speaker 158
Speaker 164
Speaker 166
Sylvester Smith
Unverified
Speaker 167
Speaker 170
Speaker 173
Speaker 176