House State Agencies & Governmental Affairs Committee
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Bills discussed (1)
| Bill | Title | Sponsor | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
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HB1189
· 1 mention in transcript
Matched: “…g to move on. Representative Kavanaugh is next on the list, House Bill 1189. And there is an amendment to this bill that will be passin…”
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TO AMEND THE REGULAR SALARY PROCEDURES AND RESTRICTIONS ACT; AND TO ELIMINATE ADDITIONAL SALARY PAYMENTS … | Cavenaugh | Died in House Committee at Sine Die Adjournment |
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Speaker 1
0:00
At least, if we need it, if it's 2 o'clock in the morning, the governor has that authority to do it, to, you know, declare who the lead agency is and who is part of the unified command. Because hours count in those kind of situations. That's what we're looking at. I don't think the average civil disturbance, but if it turns violent, like they did last time, the protesters turned violent or committed felonies, you know, we have to take that action
right then. Follow-up? And I agree, and I probably didn't do a good job of stating my question very clearly.
My concern is not that I think the governor should be able to call it. My concern is that once it's called, the duration of it is at his discretion. How long that could be, the emergency could go on. My thing would be the follow-up after it's called. I have no problem with the governor should be able to call that immediately to get you guys in front. And I really appreciate all that you guys do to keep us safe down here. But it's just that there doesn't seem to be any mechanism to say, okay, if this thing goes on past a week or two or a month, then what happens?
Do we get other approval to keep the state police down here? As a matter of fact, right now, at our nation's capital, we've got a similar situation, right, where one person has said that we need the National Guards up there and a lot of the Congress up there saying, why are they here type of deal. So that's kind of the concern that I have. Thank you. Representative Richmond, you're
recognized for questions. Motion at the appropriate time.
Speaker 14
1:40
Okay, we're going to hold off on that. Representative Love, you're recognized
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:46
for questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Berry, now, does this just include the, I guess, the Capitol Police? Does this include any other jurisdictions outside just the Capitol Police or the state police or what jurisdictions are we talking about? We're talking about
Speaker 18
2:04
the Little Rock Police Department? Thank you, Representative Love for your question.
Speaker 19
2:11
It's a great question, and I wasn't quite clear. When the plan was developed, it was developed in unison with the Arkansas State Police and the Emergency Management and the Military Department of Arkansas. But the training actually consisted of North Little Rock PD, Little Rock PD, a number of different agencies, I think maybe Saline County, Pulaski County. So there was a lot of agencies involved. And depending on where the civil disturbance, it may be on the West Memphis Bridge like we had seen recently.
So we deploy the resources of the National Guard, the state police, and whoever in that area is trained to address a civil disturbance. So it's a multi-agency cooperation, and it may be one of those things where the governor may decide that the West Memphis Police Department may be the ones that need to be in command of the event. So it's a multi-agency plan, but we try to get everybody that participates to get the proper training and the proper equipping, just like I think Little Rock PD and North Little Rock PD did.
Chair
Unverified
3:27
Representative Leitemann, you recognize for questions.
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
3:32
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, Representative Love asked part of my question, but I was going to go back to I thought it was an attack on our capital a year ago here in Little Rock. So would this bill have helped in that situation where we had people coming in? We only had 25 Capitol Police here. I mean, would this have assisted the Capitol Police and the governor in that particular situation?
Speaker 1
4:01
Great question. I think it would have. You know, with a unified command, I want to kind of address Representative Love's question, too. For example, our violent protest last time, we had Game and Fish. We had Highway Police. So we had a multitude of agencies. If you read the bill, it doesn't necessarily, the governor, say he's going to appoint the Arkansas State Police as the lead agency. I mean, he has the authority to pick who would be the best. But, again, if you need to make those quick decisions instead of having to wait to an executive order, I think it would have helped. And we've learned some lessons from the protest here, and I think that's one of the lessons we've learned is this.
That's why we're bringing forth this bill, that if you do need to take immediate action, then the governor ought to have that authority. And others, I think the last time to Representative Beck's question is, I think we went 11 days before, But, you know, the first three to four days were very violent. And then once the governor declared the unified command and made the state police the lead agency, I think the next day we arrested 79, and then we had no more protest.
So, but, yes, to answer your question, yes, it would be a benefit
Speaker 14
5:20
to do it. We're going to hold up for just a second. I just got word that this meeting
is possibly not being live streamed. So we're going to see. We're going to check into that real quick.
I just want to make sure everybody sees me up here. I don't
Speaker 30
6:06
want to miss an opportunity to have an audience. The whole system is down. I'm getting text from all
Speaker 14
6:11
the other rips too. Okay. Just got word the whole
system is down. So, yeah, I guess we might as well continue on with this.
Looks like next in line, Representative Richmond, you're recognized for your motion. Thank
you, Mr. Chair. I make a motion do pass. Okay, we'll have a motion do pass. Any discussion on the motion? Oh, you know what? I didn't, we don't have any testimony for or against this. Nobody signed up for
it. Okay. Any discussion on that motion? All in
Speaker 14
6:48
favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Ayes have it. Congratulations, Representative Bearer. Your bill has passed. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks, Committee. Okay, I was just making sure we were clear to continue on without the live stream.
Apparently, there's no rule that says we can't, so we're going to move on. Representative Kavanaugh is next on the list, House Bill 1189. And there is an amendment to this bill that will be passing out. So, Representative Kavanaugh, you will be recognized to present your amendment. Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you'll just give them a minute to get it all passed out so everybody has a chance to look at it.
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
8:09
Thank you, Mr. Chair. This amendment just simply inserts or a provision for a medical expert medical opinion. to be actually part considered not considered his employment as a
secretary or her. That's really all this amendment does. Any
questions on that amendment? Representative Love, you're recognized for a motion. I have a motion to pass on the amendment. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. All opposed? Ayes have it. You may proceed with
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
9:04
your bill as amended. Thank you Mr. Chair. This This bill is just really a simple transparency bill, an accountability bill. It just simply, in its simplest language, says that a cabinet-level secretary may not take funding or a salary from an outside source for performing their duties as a secretary that they hold for the state of Arkansas.
I've had people bring up to me why we need this. What brought this to my attention? Well, two things. It was brought to my attention that we have a secretary that receives a bonus every year from a nonprofit for the duties that he performs as a secretary. While I was looking at that, it was done through special language, so I was looking at the special language that allowed that, and then I began to look at other special language. And there is special language that explicitly prohibits the Secretary of Education from
doing the exact same thing that was allowing another secretary to do it and so there was a double standard and I could not understand the double standard so we took the language that was incorporated into the Secretary of Education prohibiting them to take an outside salary and just incorporated it into a bill that just says if it's good for one it's good for all of them and that's really all that it does. While we were going through this process and worked with the governor's office, it was brought to our attention that the Department of Health,
the Secretary of Health, is a physician. Because of that, we had to do a carve-out to make sure that he could continue to be a physician and so that he could keep his certification or anyone else that had to have to work in their field to keep their certification could do that. And so that's why we made a carve-out for that that talks about physicians and the medical expert. and that's basically the
gist of the bill and the catalyst of it and i would take any questions
okay we have a question from representative richmond you are recognized for
question thank you mr chair just out of curiosity other than the secretaries themselves is there any opposition to this
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
11:17
bill the governor is in opposition to the bill i did work with the governor uh about the language that he asked and i did do some amendment that's where this amendment came from, and I did strike some language that they were concerned about that I myself had some concerns with, but there's been no pushback from anyone else except the executive branch.
Speaker 27
11:36
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. No problem. Okay. Representative Devin Ball, you're recognized
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
11:45
for questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. Representative Kavanaugh, how many people does this bill involve? It involves
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
11:51
the secretary level only, cabinet secretary levels. And there's only one that
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
11:55
is being involved in the actual still getting a bonus, isn't there? Yes. All right, so if he was promised this and he's been drawing it year in, year out,
my question is are we going to make a bill to accommodate or unaccommodate one guy? Well,
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
12:14
the thing is it's not really unaccommodating because you have a secretary that's also explicitly said in language that he can't, so we have a double standard. But if the executive branch feels that this secretary is due more money for the job that he performs, there is a mechanism that they can come to ALC and they can get this additional money for the secretary. Okay.
Thank you. You're welcome. Representative
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
12:49
Love, you're recognized for questions. I was just curious with the special language, why was this secretary,
Speaker 18
12:55
I guess who was the secretary and why was this secretary receiving the bonus? I'm just curious about that. Why the special language was put in there? That
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
13:07
special language was put in before I was elected, so I can't really tell you.
I do believe it was put in there to allow the Secretary of Commerce to get a bonus for performing his duties based upon the recommendation of the governor, is my understanding. I can't really talk to you about who put it in and why, because that wasn't during my tenure. But what I can speak about is this nonprofit is supposed to be a public-private partnership to help get more employment into the state of Arkansas.
During my looking into this, I discovered that the secretary in question actually sat on the board that actually voted on themselves to give the bonus. And I've also found out he doesn't just get yearly bonuses, he also gets quarterly payments from this nonprofit. and for me that's a conflict of interest for me it's like who do you work for are you working for the citizens of the state of Arkansas or are you working for this non-profit so for me it was just
a complete conflict of interest and that's why I brought this out and in particular when I looked in that we had specifically said that the Secretary of Education could not do this exact thing but we allow one other one to do it. When we have the mechanism available to the executive branch to allow us to raise the salary of this secretary if we need to.
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
14:40
Okay. What is the name of the nonprofit? It's an
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
14:44
economic development nonprofit. I don't have it in front of me.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. I just got word. We don't know how long our video system is down.
We'll continue on. Oh, I'm being told now it's back up. Okay, so we'll continue on. I was going to say we were going to stop and not take action on it until we got word on that. Representative Ladyman, you're recognized for questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
15:19
I was going to wait until the system came up. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I was looking at your bill, and I guess I've got a problem with it, and I'm not talking about a secretary in particular, but, you know, we talk about this affecting one secretary, but we're saying the secretary of health can do this because of his profession. And then the other problem I have is on line 13 and 14 on page 2, and I may have the wrong line here, but it's an exception, I believe, and it says they can get paid for work performed as a physician or otherwise related to a professional license or certification.
So, you know, there are all kinds of circumstances that might come up as a secretary. They might be a secretary. I mean, it could even be something as simple as being a referee at ball games or something. I mean, there could be many other payments that this person could get. But the one that really bothers me is, say this person happens to hold an engineering degree, and he's getting paid for some other work other than his secretary's work.
And what this is saying is if he has a professional certification as an engineer, he could work. If he chooses not to get a PE and just work as an engineer in non-certified work, he couldn't do it. So it looks to me like we're picking and choosing who can and cannot. And if that's the case, I can't
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
17:02
support it. Yeah, you're misunderstanding the intent of the law. The intent of the law is not saying that if they hold a
professional certificate or if they are a physician, that they can't work at that.
That is not performing their duties as a secretary, a cabinet-level secretary. I'm talking about performing their duties as a cabinet-level secretary. If they decide to take a secondary side gig and it requires them to have a certificate or something, I'm okay with that. And that's why you didn't ever want to say a physician could not work. Number one, a lot of them need to work because we need physicians. But secondly, they need to keep their professional certification.
They need to work to be able to do that. But even engineers, they need certain things that they need to be to be certified. This was not going to keep them from being able to do those jobs because it's not a conflict of interest. If they're performing an engineering job, that is not their duties as a secretary. Well, I
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
18:04
understand the intent of the law, but I'm talking about the letter of the law. And the way I read that, I think we're picking and choosing, and I can't support that.
Thank you. Okay, Representative Cozart, you're recognized for questions. Thank
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
18:23
you, Mr. Chair. Representative Kavanaugh, wasn't this some kind of contract that he was already under before he was hired
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
18:30
in as Secretary? That I don't know. I just know that there is special language that explicitly allows for him to collect this money, and there is explicit language that prohibits the Secretary of Education from doing the same thing. There is a conflict. I understand that.
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
18:44
I just believe that he was already under a contract that he was being paid before his, and they knew that, and that was acceptable when he came in. So I think he could not make a new contract with someone to do something different while he's a secretary, But to finish up the contract with this one, I don't really have a problem with that. But something new, I would have more of a problem with it. The contract should have been up by this time. I'm not
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
19:05
sure when that goes away. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Duffinball, you're recognized for questions.
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
19:16
Thank you again, Mr. Chair. Okay. One other thing. I mean, how do you, you know, he was promised this by the governor. How do you deal with that? I mean, all I know is our word ought to be a bond, and what do you do with that? I mean, just say, ah, he lied to you, you know, so I have a problem with trying to change that big stream.
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
19:39
The executive branch could go and request that his grade, his pay, be up to the amount that he feels that he's due.
There is that mechanism, and he's got plenty of
Representative John Payton
Unverified
19:59
time to get it done. All right. Representative Payton, you're recognized for questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Kavanaugh, I'm missing the language somewhere that makes this apply to side jobs. What I'm seeing on page one, line 27, a cabinet-level secretary is prohibited from accepting additional salary
for the performance of his or her duties as a cabinet-level secretary. That's not talking about a side job, is it? I mean, that's talking about getting extra pay for their position as secretary. Yes, this does not
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
20:35
address that they cannot have a side job where they can get paid. This is directly dealing with their duties as a cabinet-level secretary. okay well i thought somebody
Representative John Payton
Unverified
20:47
had found some language in here that had to do with
side jobs or engineering or something but i mean as an auctioneer i'd still be free to conduct an auction and hold an auction and and make money at auctions yes but i wouldn't be free to accept money from outside sources just because i'm a secretary exactly thank you you
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
21:13
could also have a side gig where you knitted t-shirts or hats and you could still have that. There's no prohibiting on an additional job. It's the taking of money for doing your duties
Chair
Unverified
21:24
as secretary. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Meeks, you're
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
21:34
recognized for questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to make sure I understand the wrong we're trying to get right here and so correct me if
I'm wrong and what we're trying to do is prohibit a cabinet level secretary from basically getting bonuses or additional pay for conducting what would be their normal course of work is that kind of a summary of what what we're trying to do here
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
21:57
from an outside source they could still get their their salary and their money from the state if that was part of their pay plan based on bonuses in the state they could still get that it's getting it from
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
22:09
an outside source. So we don't want a bribe, in other words, is what you're trying to stop? What
could potentially become or be construed as a bribe? Or a conflict of
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
22:22
interest. That's really what it could be construed as, is a conflict of interest. Who are you serving? Are
you serving the citizens of Arkansas or are you serving the other person that's paying you? Okay. I just wanted to make sure I had a... And the other thing was that we did
have an exact prohibiting of the Secretary of Education from doing this exact
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
22:44
thing. We have a conflict. Right. So there's nothing in law that would currently prohibit that from happening. So if the Secretary of XYZ does something in the performance of their duty, an outside entity could pay them for performing that duty as well? Yes.
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
22:59
Representative Duffinball, you had more questions? Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate it. I'm sorry to hold up this meeting, but I need to ask you one more question. No problem. The Secretary's additional compensation is tied to his role as AEDC director and not in his role as secretary.
Speaker 53
23:20
Does that cover any ground or change any ground?
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
23:25
He is the Secretary of Commerce who is over AEDC, so he could still not take that money.
He is the Secretary of Commerce. His job is to represent the citizens of Arkansas as the Secretary of Commerce. Whether you want to give him a secondary title and try to work it in that way, it's still a conflict of interest. But once again, I'll state that we have the mechanism that if the executive branch wants to raise his salary to this amount, we
can do that. Okay. I appreciate you. No problem. Representative Love, you're looking like you have a question.
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
24:01
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess the only thing that is a little fuzzy here is, Representative Kavanaugh, the non-profit that you're in, that you're talking about, is it a non-profit that actually just does economic development for, like, their interests as an entire state, or is it a non-profit it just for specific entities? I asked the Secretary of
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
24:30
Commerce to provide me who funded that non-profit so that I could
determine that, and he would not provide that
Chair
Unverified
24:39
information. Okay. Oh, okay. Thank you. Representative
Speaker 100
24:43
Whitaker, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative, during the earlier
Representative David Whitaker
Unverified
24:49
part of your presentation, you said that in the process of looking up these things, you discovered that there was a specific prohibition on the Secretary of Education from receiving any sort of outside emollient like this. My question is, and this is kind of a process thing, you know, as we all tried, you know,
referred to as the sausage-making process, we all decide how to fix a problem. I'm curious why you didn't just bring a bill that got rid of the prohibition on the Secretary of Education. Because,
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
25:25
for me, it wasn't just about the secretary not being able to do it. It was about a conflict of interest with a cabinet-level secretary to be able to take outside sources for performing their duties. Once again, it's just like, who are you working for?
Are you working for the citizens of the state of Arkansas who are paying your salary, or are you working for the other
Representative David Whitaker
Unverified
25:48
person that's paying you for your duties? Thank you. But answer me this. But were these payments hidden? Did you have to investigate and find them hidden somewhere? Or were these publicly out in the sunshine already? Some
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
26:02
of them were. Some of them were not. I mean, you have to go in and look in the statement of financial interest to find out this information part of it.
But you don't know how much because you just report over $12,500. You don't put over how much it really is. Now, the governor does make recommendations. and if citizens are paying attention, you know it. But as we know, a lot of our citizens don't know that and they don't understand that. About the quarterly payments, I was not aware of that until here recently. And, you know, in addition, this nonprofit also pays to upgrade his flights when he flies throughout the country and the world,
which that's part of normal doing business, but it's all part of it. When I look at this nonprofit, it's collecting about $100,000 and most of that is going toward these types of monies to the secretary. Thank you. You're welcome. Representative Cozart, you're recognized. Are there
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
27:02
any other secretaries that have a dual role such as he does because he does have a dual role? There are several, and that's why. Do you know if they get paid to do that dual role?
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
27:14
As far as I've, when we looked and researched and went through this, that he was the only one receiving additional monies outside of his salary from another other than the state for his
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
27:25
job. Okay, so the others get a salary for performing a dual role, but he's the only one that gets extra money because his salary was provided before taking on the new duties. Is that correct? He
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
27:37
gets a salary in performing a dual role because he got transferred to the Secretary of Commerce. Just like the other secretaries who might perform a dual role,
they get the same salary that they get. they don't get it from an outside source. They only get it from their salary from the
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
27:53
state. So he's still, but he's still the, uh, works for the AEDC also, right? He's over
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
28:00
that conversation. Lots of them have secondary, lots of them have secondary roles. That's his dual role.
Speaker 43
28:08
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. Seeing no other questions from committee members. Uh, okay.
Representative Beck, you're recognize. I like this bill. I'd like to intend this bill, but something you said
gives me questions. All right. The physician, you stated that if, as an engineer, I can go out and do, if I was a secretary, I could go out and do jobs. So, and be paid for it, be compensated for and I would not be in violation
of this. Explain to me what the physician's doing that requires that they have an exemption in
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
28:47
this law. Because under current it said to make sure that there could not be any misconstruing
that if the Secretary of Health was a physician and he wanted to practice one or two or three days a week at another hospital, then he could do that without any question that it was going to be considered compensation. What if he went to work for an outside hospital? Because Dr. Romero is a highly skilled individual that if he needed to go work at UAMS Children's Hospital or another hospital, he would still be able to do that and not be in conflict with this bill.
And that's what it's about. I myself did not see him working as a physician to be in conflict with his
duties as a secretary, but I wanted
to make that clear. Follow-up. And I agree, but I thought that you stated that as an engineer, I could go work in another place with my profession. So what's the difference between the ability of me to go work as an engineer and Dr. Romero to go work as a physician?
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
29:54
I see that as the same thing. Well, that's why we put in there about professional certificate or certification to keep that, that you're allowed to do that. We just didn't want anything to be misconstrued. We were being overly cautious and didn't want any misconstruing about that. That's why I'm not trying to keep somebody from able to have a secondary job in their profession. I'm just trying to make sure that we don't have additional salaries for performing their duties as the secretaries.
Chair
Unverified
30:21
Thank you. No problem. Representative Meeks, you're recognized.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
30:24
So the question that I have is, so we've got a secretary, they perform their duties and they get a W-2 at the end of the year from the state for their salaries and payments for doing that duty. So what you're saying is that these secretaries would be getting another W-2 from somewhere else for performing their duties as that secretary position. Is that correct?
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
30:53
Whether it's a W-2 or a 1099 or whatever it might be.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
30:57
So they would be getting some tax document for performing the duties of secretary from some source other than the state is what you're saying? For their duties as a secretary, yes. And then my follow-up question is, in the way the language of the bill reads, is it says that they're not allowed to accept an additional salary from whatever this outside source is. Is that term salary defined somewhere else in statute? because I can, you know, if I really want to pay you, I can label it a bonus or, you know, some other title
to potentially get around what your intent is here. I believe in other parts of
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
31:36
the statute. It's commonly used salaries as payment. It's used as a payment. Okay, so bonus or stipend or anything like that would qualify. That's
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
31:42
my understanding. I did ask that question. Okay. Any other questions from committee members?
Seeing none, there's no one signed up to speak for or against this bill. Anyone in the audience want to speak for or against this bill? Seeing none, what's the will of the committee?
With no motion, Representative Kavanaugh, your bill will go to the bottom of the agenda. Thank you. Representative Godfrey, are you prepared to present House Bill 1342? Do you have any presenters that you want to bring up with you at this time? You're welcome to do that. If you'll just have them come set at the end of the table
and have them recognize themselves for the record. Their name and who they're with,
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
32:49
please. Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Committee. I have with me this morning the Marshallese Consul General, Consul Eldon Alec, whose office is in my district. I'm so glad he's able to join us today. And thank you for the opportunity to talk about Bill 1342, also known as the Marshallese Law Enforcement Act.
I first just want to say thank you to Representative Penzo for his thorough and helpful explanation of the bill on Monday. He gave a lot of great context for COFA, that Compact of Free Association, as well as highlighted a lot of the benefits of the bill. I was also glad to hear from Joel Miner, who shared his story and really highlighted the opportunity that we would be expanding for new Marshallese law enforcement. This bill does allow members of the Marshallese community
to serve as law enforcement officers. It's been a very collaborative effort between the Marshallese community and law enforcement with two main benefits. One, for recruiting officers, and two, for our shared commitment to improving community safety and trust. Because of that collaboration, the bill is supported by the Marshallese community, led by Consul General Eldon Alec, who we'll share a little bit later. It has also been supported by law enforcement. I'm so grateful for the support of the Association of Chiefs of Police, the Association of Sheriffs, and the Department of Public Safety, who have been very collaborative and helpful throughout this process.
I'm also very appreciative and grateful for the collaboration across party lines, for the additional co-sponsors who have come on, on both the House and the Senate side, especially Representative Penzo, who also represents a large constituency of Marshallese Arkansans. And so with that, with your permission, Mr. Chair, I'd like to turn it over to Consul Alec, who can also talk about the Marshallese community and the benefits of this bill, not only for Springdale, but for communities across the state.
Yes, if you'll just state your name and who you're with for
Speaker 129
34:59
the record, you may proceed. Eldon Alec. Chairman
Eldon Alec
Unverified
35:06
Gonzalez. members of the committee, I would like to first thank our Heavenly Father for this wonderful opportunity. My name is Eldon Alec, and I am the Consul General for the Republic of the Marshall Islands. I live in Bentonville, and my office is in Springdale. I am deeply honored and humbled
to be here today. I'm here today to support House Bill 1342. But first let me give you a brief history of this unique relationship between our countries, the United States and the Marshall Islands. Americans first set foot on our shores in 1857 when a missionary vessel from Boston called the Morning Star came to the Marshall Islands. Today, over 90% of Marshallese are Christians.
However, it would be 91 years later, in 1947, when the United States established relationships with my country. Right after World War II, under a United Nations mandate and administered by the United States, the Marshall Islands joined the other islands in Micronesia to form the Terrestriator of the Pacific Islands. Between 1947 and 1956,
the United States used the Marshall Islands as a testing ground for its nuclear weapons program, dropping a total of 67 bombs on Bikini and Anoetak atolls. In the 1970s, the Treasury of the Pacific Islands was dismantled, resulting in three island nations, the Republic of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. On May 1st, 1979,
the Marshall Islands Constitution was ratified and the Republic of the Marshall
Speaker 131
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Islands was official. In the late 80s to early 90s, These three island nations forged
Eldon Alec
Unverified
37:21
treaties of compact or free association with the United States. The Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States
Speaker 131
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of Micronesia implemented theirs in 1986 and the Republic of Palau in 1994. These treaties are almost identical.
And these three island nations are often referred to as Freely Associated States or the COFA nations. In a nutshell, what this comeback does is giving the United States military control of our
Eldon Alec
Unverified
38:00
land and seas, while providing military protection and financial support to our countries. In fact, a billion-dollar military installation called the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Testing Defense Site
is in one of our islands, Kwajalein Atoll. The Compaq of Free Association also allows our young men and women to enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces. A 2008 study revealed that the freely associated states had a higher per capita enlistment rate than any U.S. states. I am a proud U.S. Army veteran. Also, as a member of the United Nations, the Marshall Islands has a perfect record of voting on the side of the United States.
Speaker 131
38:53
the compact also allows you and i unlimited travel living and
Eldon Alec
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39:03
working in each other's countries ever since our compact went into effect in 1986 our people have been migrating to to the united states to seek the american dream there are marshallies in all the u.s states The highest majority are in Hawaii and here in Arkansas.
That is why our only two consulates are in Hawaii and in Arkansas. I estimate the Marshallese population in Arkansas to be between 15,000 and 20,000. Many of these folks are working for all the poultry plants, Walmart, and other companies. And that is why I am here today. To urge you to support House Bill 1342, I strongly believe it is a no-brainer, a win-win situation for all.
By allowing our citizens to be certified law enforcement officers, we'll enhance peace, build trust, and unite our communities. We have a handful of Marshallese who are members of the Springdale Police Force right now. Let me tell you, they are some of the most admired and respected members of our community, especially the Marshallese community. Let's get more to join the police ranks.
Let Arkansas be the second state behind Oregon to do this. I believe if we can be in combat side by side in the trenches of Iran and Afghanistan, we surely can fight crimes side by side in the streets of Arkansas. The passing of this bill will be a solidification and extension of this unique relationship between our countries.
Thank you, and God bless. Thank you for that presentation. We have
Representative John Payton
Unverified
41:17
questions from committee members. Representative Payton, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for your testimony, sir. Representative Godfrey, I think I'm perfectly comfortable with members of the population of Marshallese there in Springdale being on the police force. But I have other concerns in what type of precedent it might set.
I mean, the United States has very close relations with other nations. And we are setting a precedent here when we put into code that non-citizens can be law enforcement and have police powers. So that concerns me. But specifically, if you look at Section 4, well, if you look at the first part, you've inserted language that seems to very narrowly tailor this to the Marshallese.
But when you look in Section 4, you're striking the language that says the citizen of the United States, and you're not inserting any specific language that would narrow that to the Marshallese population here in Arkansas. So my question is, can you explain why the language being stricken in Section 4, can you explain how it's not much broader than your intent yes thank you for the question I'm
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
42:44
glad that you brought it up I'm another member brought up the same concern and I first just want to say the intent of the bill was always for all types of law enforcement officers from state police to city and county officers to auxiliary officers to have the same and consistent language. My understanding in drafting was that the reason that citizenship provision was excluded in section four was that the auxiliary officer qualifications mirrored the officer qualifications
for municipal and county officers. So that was my understanding for why the citizenship needed to be stricken in that section but because since it was spelled out in section three those qualifications for those local level officers would also be valid for auxiliary officers. I know that Representative Dawson had this same question. I think it's valid to bring
it up but certainly the intention of my collaboration with law enforcement with the Department of Public Safety who's vetted this bill and has signed off on it has always been to narrowly tailor all eligible officers under that Compact of Free Association. That language was stricken because their qualifications were written elsewhere in code. That was my understanding. Follow up. You're recognized.
Representative John Payton
Unverified
44:13
So I mean section four starts off by saying concerning the
qualifications to become an auxiliary law enforcement officer. I mean, if that strictly matches other sections of code, I don't know why it would have its own section, but all we have to look at is what's in front of us today, and under the qualifications of an auxiliary, instead of doing the same thing that we did in Section three and striking the citizen and adding the free association people i mean it's just striking
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
44:51
the requirement to be a citizen yeah i think that's a completely valid concern again i'm happy to follow up um with
blr to see why it was drafted that way i can also um i know that secretary cook is here and is in favor of the bill as written if she has any commentary on that um but i i do know So, you know, in my conversations in drafting, it was always an intention to have the Compact to Free Association be for all officers, including auxiliary, but I think it's important that you flag that. I'm happy to follow up with you about that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Payton, if you would like, we'll get Ms. Cook up here in a little bit, but Representative Jean has a question. We'll let him get that first. Representative Jean, you're recognized. and
and miss cook probably can answer this question but i'm referring back to my days as mayor i think an auxiliary officer and if somebody needs to correct me if i'm wrong does not have the authority to do arrest uh maybe i'm maybe i'm wrong about that
Speaker 43
45:49
why don't we go ahead and get miss cook up here to the table if you don't mind if y'all could make room for her
Speaker 14
45:55
down there somewhere. If you'll just state your name and who
Speaker 140
46:14
you're with for the record, you are welcome to answer the questions. Jamie Cook, Secretary of Department of Public Safety. Representative Jean, auxiliary officers do have the authority to make arrests, but they are restricted to the supervision of a full-time
officer. That's the reason they have their own section in code, so that they have to work under the supervision of a full-time officer. And to get back to Representative Payton, if you will, I can respond to that. We were surprised that the stipulation of the auxiliary officers being citizen was in code specifically so i'm glad that that was brought to our attention arkansas code 129104 3a gives the commission on law enforcement standards and training the
authority to set the requirements for police officers and via the rule class rule 1002 3a that's where the citizenship requirement is established for all law enforcement which includes full-time part-time uh specialized in auxiliary so it's specified in the auxiliary chapter um i didn't really know that just to be quite honest and so by striking it in section four it just makes it consistent across the board so we i don't think we necessarily need it uh one way or another
Speaker 30
47:32
Representative Gene, you can continue. Well, Secretary Cook,
just information-wise, when it says it needs to be under the guidance of a full-time officer, does that mean they need to be patrolling with them or just answering to them? so the supreme or the attorney general's opinion on that
Speaker 140
47:56
is that they just have to have the direct uh contact with a full-time officer and that can be via radio or telephone okay thank you
Chair
Unverified
48:06
okay representative dotson you're recognized for questions
thank you mr chair um miss cook uh or secretary cook it did did i hear you say that it's under the citizenship requirement for everybody is under a rule or is it in code this
Speaker 140
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is a mixture of both so and for the state police can y'all hear me without that being down on my mouth okay so for the state police it's specified citizenship is specified as a requirement for a state police
officer under 128202A1A. It's also specified in 129304J for auxiliary officers. But the rule, class rule 10023A, is where the citizenship is required for all officers. So it's a little bit of a mixture. So the rule is what
Speaker 143
49:04
says it's for all. Yes. The rule could be
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
49:11
changed. Yes. without going through a legislative...
I mean, obviously, it would have to be approved by the legislature, but without having to change the code if this is struck out. And I'm trying to remember, but in my time in municipal office, I think all of our law enforcement officers were sworn in, where they swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Arkansas and all that. Is that true for all officers across the entire state? Yes.
Speaker 140
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It's also part of our code of ethics. That's a requirement under Clutch Rule 1002 as well. How can
Chair
Unverified
49:53
a non-citizen make that oath of office? It may be
Representative Megan Godfrey
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50:00
that Consul General could come and clarify that, just because the relationship
between the Marshall Islands and the United States is unique. Consul, do you have a provide?
Eldon Alec
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50:20
All I can just say is we swear the same oath when we joined the military to protect the Constitution of the United States, and this would
Chair
Unverified
50:35
I appreciate the answer. You're welcome. Representative Payton, you're
Representative John Payton
Unverified
50:40
recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I hate for y'all to play musical chairs, but I want to make sure I understood your explanation clearly.
If this is stricken from 12-9-304-J, then the only requirement to be a citizen that remains in Arkansas code would be pertaining to the state police. In code,
Speaker 140
51:08
yes. It's also in rule 1002. The 12-9-104 gives the commission the authority to set the rules or set the selection. I think we all understand
Speaker 155
51:19
here the difference between rules and code.
Representative John Payton
Unverified
51:23
but this is what I'm getting at about this bill being much broader than just the Marshallese population we are making a change in code in this bill that is totally unrelated to the Marshallese we could put the language in section 4 just like we are section 3 that narrowly tailors it but we're not were striking the language,
and so the state police would still be required to be a citizen, but anybody else would be only required in the rule and could be changed with a much lower threshold than the code. Is that correct? Correct me if I'm wrong in my interpretation here. I
Speaker 140
52:16
guess I may not be following you that well, Representative Payton, and I apologize, you could certainly leave it in code
and tailor it just like they have Section 3 or remove it in its entirety and rely on Section 3. Thank you. And that
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
52:35
was my understanding and my intention was that Section 3 would guide the rulemaking for Section 4 because auxiliary officers are under that supervision and under those same qualifications
and eligibility of officers in Section 3. Thank you. Thank
Chair
Unverified
52:51
you, Mr. Chair. Okay, Representative Meeks, you're recognized.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
52:57
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to kind of help me understand the relationship here, the Marshallese citizens, that's not considered a territory, or they're not considered actual citizens of the United States. They have a special status. Is that why we're having to do that? That's correct. So I'm correct on that. The second question that I have is this allows a compact of free association. Any other territories have this compact of free association, or is it just the Marshallese Islands?
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
53:28
That's a great question. So two other nations do, Micronesia and Palau. I named it just kind of colloquially the Marshallese Law Enforcement Act because the vast majority of COFA migrants here in Arkansas are Marshallese. But, yes, it would also extend to any other COFA Islanders from those other
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
53:47
two nations. Okay, and I guess I support the
intent of the bill, but I think before I would feel comfortable voting in the affirmative that I would like to see what Representative Payton has suggested,
that the language in Section 3 also be entered into Section 4 to get me fully comfortable. Like I said, I like the intent here, but I would like to have that assurance from 3 also and 4. Thank
you, Mr. Chair. Representative Love, you're
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
54:21
recognized. Okay. Representative Ladyman, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I'm a little concerned about the auxiliary officer, Section 4 there. As Representative Jean said, and I was a mayor and we had auxiliary officers,
and they're very good, but their abilities or their enforcement things that they can do are limited. And when you talk about the Arkansas State Police applying to them or the requirements applying to them, in most cases, if not in all cases, our auxiliary officers did not attend the academy. In other words, they came in as trainees.
They started out riding with a qualified trained officer. and then as they advance, they might be able to ride by themselves but connected by telephone or radio to a qualified, trained officer. So they are a separate group. So I'm not sure when you talk about the state police applying to them because they've not gone through training. They're not trained, certified officers. So they are a separate category.
And I guess I have a problem as well the way Section 4 is written, stracking that language, because I think it's cloudy whether what you're quoting applies to those auxiliary officers. You can talk about that. Sure, I think that's a fair
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
55:55
concern. I'm happy to turn that over to Secretary Cook just because, again, And she knows that relationship between the qualifications
of officers under Section 3 and also auxiliary officers.
So if she has any additional comment, I
Speaker 140
56:12
would be happy to hear from her. And Representative Lady Mead, I mean, it would be fine with us to mirror the language in Section 3 to Section 4. I might not be explaining myself well, but let me try again. There's four different level or four different classifications of police officers in the state of Arkansas. They're classified as full-time, part-time, specialized, or auxiliary. And the Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training sets the requirements and the rules for employment
and continue and add for all four of those different categories. State police would fall into the full-time certification requirements. so all of the requirements are the same except for you're exactly right the training requirement specialized part-time and auxiliary have different training requirements than the full-time so that's really the biggest difference but you're also right on the auxiliary if they're not um working
then they have no uh law enforcement authority outside of when they are um in service if they're If they're not working at the police department, then they don't have any more law enforcement authority than a private citizen. I hope that clarifies a little bit.
Speaker 43
57:35
Did that answer your question? Okay. Representative Jean, you're recognized.
Chair
Unverified
57:41
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Cook,
I'm going to ask you, do you support this language that we're allowing a non-citizen be a member of an auxiliary police department?
And my understanding is that's any non-citizen. We're not just dealing with the Marshallese. Do you support that, and do you
Speaker 166
58:04
think that's good policy? My understanding is it's only for the Compact of Free Association,
Speaker 140
58:10
which would only apply to the Marshallese. And if that's the case, then yes, sir,
I do. Well, I'm not sure that's what the final paragraph says. That's my concern. Because we could have citizens from, they may be good people here,
but from other countries that are not in the same spirit that the Marshallese are, and they are our allies and are our friends. But
just that sentence on that last paragraph, I think that opens up to any country. I'm sorry, Representative
Representative Megan Godfrey
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58:43
Jean Committee, if I could. Again, my intention was always to have all law enforcement officers of all of the types, the eligibility be narrowly tailored to COFA. And if it would be helpful, I would be happy to pull down an amend
to add additional language clarifying in Section 4 that we mean the same thing as we do in Section 3. Again, that was always the goal in drafting, and if this is a drafting error and a miss, and that was my misunderstanding, I'd be happy to pull it down, add that language and come
back to the committee if that's okay with you, Mr. Chair. We have
one more. Representative Love, do you want to pass on your question? Okay. What's the will of the committee?
Okay. Without objection, we will allow her to pull this down and bring it back with an amendment. Thank you. Thank you. Next on the agenda is House Bill 1368, Representative Ray. You're recognized, and if you have a guest that you would like to bring up with you, that is fine.
Yes, you're recognized. Present your bill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee for the opportunity to present House Bill 1368. this bill would standardize the election calendar regarding special elections so
that voters can go to the polls at predictable and consistent times to cast their vote on issues that affect their community and state I'm going to try to answer three quick questions why am I bringing this legislation what does this bill do and why is it a good idea so why am I bringing you this legislation because currently special elections can be put before voters at unpredictable and inconsistent times, but the results are entirely predictable. Oftentimes we see
abysmal turnout rates, sometimes 5%, 6%, 8%, and the issue sails through because nobody knew when the election was happening, except for the folks who stand to directly benefit from its passage. So what would this bill do? This This bill would allow for four dates, every election cycle, on which a special election could be held. If the special election were to be held in an election year, it could be held in conjunction with the preferential primary, or it could be held in conjunction with the November election.
If it's held in a non-election year, it could be held on the third Tuesday in May, or it could be held at the November date. I believe the way it's worded is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. That's our normal general election day. This bill would not apply to vacancies for office. I've received that question a couple of times. And this bill also includes emergency language for an emergency special election. An emergency, you'll see, is defined on page five.
That's where the meat of the bill is. And emergencies under this bill have three categories, natural disasters such as fires, floods, tornadoes, et cetera, also federal or state court rulings, as well as an imminent threat to public health and safety. In my opinion, these are very broad exemptions, and the language for the exemptions was drafted by staff at the Association of Counties. All of the association of county groups, none of them are opposed to this bill.
The State Board of Elections has reviewed this bill and does not have problems with it. The Secretary of State's office has reviewed this bill and does not have problems with it. So why is this a good idea? Three quick reasons. First, standardizing the election calendar will increase voter participation and it will be fair for voters. I'm not speculating when I say this, we know, because we have empirical data, that the turnout in special elections is extremely low, much lower than in primary or general elections.
And I've invited a PhD economist to share some of the data on this. We should want higher participation in our elections because it brings greater legitimacy to the actions of government when items are enacted. Citizens not even knowing when the election is going to be held, that's one of the highest barriers to participation in an election. Secondly, standardizing the election calendar will help lead to lower taxes in the long run. I don't need to remind everyone that
Arkansas has the third highest sales tax in the entire country when you combine state and local rates. We're less than a half a percent away from being number one in the country. And make no mistake, if we continue on this course, we will earn that dubious distinction before too long again I'm not speculating we have a lot of data on this the the research shows that when these special elections are held the tax increases sail through but I would like to point out that when they're held on
a general election date they still pass at a rate of almost 50 percent so what What that tells me, and what that shows, is that Arkansas voters are willing to fund projects, local projects that have merit, if they are good ideas. But when there's a representative sample of voters that turn out at the election, they do happen to be a little bit more discerning in what they're willing to support. Lastly, I'll make this point, standardizing the election calendar will save taxpayers
money. In the last several years, the research shows that we've spent $9.8 million on special elections. That's a lot of potholes that could be filled with those millions of dollars. It's a lot of poll workers that could have been hired at our primary and general elections. And the cost of our special elections will continue to go up because the minimum wage continues to grow up or to go up and that adds thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to
the cost of these elections so simply by standardizing the calendar we'll be able to increase voter participation we'll be able to control the growth of taxes and we'll be able to save taxpayers money and with that i'd be happy to try and answer any questions
Speaker 43
1:05:47
do we have any questions from committee members? Representative Gene,
you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Ray, this is, I haven't read all this bill, but I'm getting into it. But
on Section 22, there's a list of counties, and one of my counties that I represent is on there, Columbia explained this is on page 9 section 22 explain what what that means by listing those counties I'm not sure why
those are listed to be honest with you the it doesn't change the any it doesn't make any changes to the list of
counties why is it in there well because there's there's language that's added there that that said that just standardizes the listing of the preferential primary date there or the because the date of it originally said you see it's crossed through where it says yeah on line 19 and 20 on the first Tuesday in March that language is replaced because we won't be holding
Chair
Unverified
1:07:05
election well I'm just trying to figure out if this is standard throughout the
Speaker 180
1:07:13
state. Maybe I need to go back and dig down a little deeper. I just
don't understand why the counties are listed. If somebody knows. Representative Gene, I believe that is the conservation districts. That's counties that have the conservation districts that's specific to them. Okay,
Chair
Unverified
1:07:29
but it has nothing to do with special elections,
does it? I would say their board members are probably elected on special elections.
That's probably what that has to do
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:07:55
with. Representative Ladyman, you're recognized for questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Ray, I've always opposed these kind of bills because of my experience in the city, because I'm concerned that if a city has a real urgent need
for, say, a water line or a major project in a water system or a sewer system or whatever it might be, I don't feel like cities can wait on some of these special elections. So is there exemptions in this bill for those kind of emergencies within cities. I don't believe counties would have the same issue, but I oppose these bills all the time because I believe there
should be an exception for water or sewer or other emergencies within the city.
Yeah, I appreciate your concern, Representative Leitman. I know you and I have spoken about this at length in previous years. And frankly, that's the reason that I have made sure to include very broad exemption language on page five of this bill and imminent public health and safety threat is listed as one of the three exemptions there and and I would have to imagine that not being able to provide water for citizens in an imminent situation like that would would
certainly qualify I'm not an attorney but that's I think a reasonable person would say
Representative John Payton
Unverified
1:09:33
that Representative Payton, you're recognized. Okay. Well, we won't take your question then. Are there any other questions from committee members? Okay. All right. We thought we had Senator Hammer back in the House. Just assumed you wanted questions.
Seeing no more questions. we have one person to signed up signed up for informational purposes uh jeremy horford all did
i get that even anywhere close
if you state your name and who you're with for the record you may proceed with your presentation thank you mr chair and thank you uh committee for
Representative Kendon Underwood
Unverified
1:10:12
allowing me to to talk about my research today i'm a my name is jeremy horford all i'm a professor of economics at uca i'm also a research scholar at the arkansas center for research and economics which is also at
uca so this this topic specifically of uh special elections for sales taxes is something that i've been studying for a number of years at uca along with students at uca we've been gathering data on these elections so on the handouts you have in front of you that's from data we collected uh ideally we thought this would all be in one place maybe the secretary of state would have it but but but it did not exist for these local elections so we gathered data on over a thousand of these special elections over the last 40 years and then we analyzed for the content to look at
it so i just want to highlight three things you can see in the handout and then i'll be happy to take any questions about it too uh the first is that of these now over 1 000 sales tax elections have taken place uh in the past 40 years uh over 80 percent of them have been at special elections so uh the vast majority have taken place uh outside of a a primary or general election uh the second point which representative ray mentioned is that the turnout rate is much lower when it is a special election in fact it's less than half of the turnout rate on average at a
general election uh so the the average for special elections is 19 but uh a lot of these are in the single digits as well right so much lower turnout than we see for general elections and slightly lower than primary elections as well and then the third point which representative ray also mentioned but i'll just highlight the specific data here is that these are much more likely to pass at a special election so about two-thirds of them pass when it takes place during a special election
and about 44 percent pass when it takes place during a general election so the pass rate's a little little more than uh half at the general election but still a good deal of them do pass so it's not that uh being in a general election is going to prevent these from passing uh just wouldn't be that uh our prediction would be if this rule was changed that fewer of them would pass but still it is possible for that to to pass at a general election so that's kind of the main highlights of my research i could go on this for hours i have i have long papers i'm sure i could
hand out you to read it also but we tried to summarize the research what we thought would be the most important points but uh happy to take any questions about anything else about this
topic do we have any questions from committee members seeing none there's no one else to sign up to speak no i'm sorry i'm sorry hang on let me back that up because we do have uh again to speak against this bill john wilkerson if you will come to the table and identify yourself
Speaker 189
1:13:14
committee uh and i want to thank representative ray for talking with us yesterday about this bill uh sharing our concerns uh with the bill could you state your name and who you're with i'm sorry john wilkerson general counsel of the municipal league um so again i appreciate representative ray uh listening to us and and allowing us to express our concerns i can't argue of the research from the economic side but i can tell you that from our perspective these these elections are important and the timing of the elections is important so for a number of different reasons whether it bottlenecks up issuances of bonds or whether something needs
to be done right now to to allow a bond to be issued but even more than that obviously we're focused on local control but one thing i want to point out as i was researching this bill last night is the impact that it has on citizen petitions and right now there's 13 sections of this bill that amend the the citizens ability to put something on the ballot and one of those petitions actually is for the removal of a sales tax and one of the other petitions um provisions in here allows for the petition to choose or the petitioners to choose the date of the election
and so i'm kind of i'm trying i'm still looking into that and the constitutionality of section one article five about referendum and initiative petitions in the constitution itself so we're trying to figure all that out but again there are downstream downstream problems with putting these elections two times a year and again I can't argue with the with the professor on the data about turnout and all that sort of thing but again these elections are timed certain times certain ways because there's just certain needs that have to be met from the city or town's perspective and I said this to representative Ray yesterday we had heard that there was a bill
about having special elections four times a year we're having internal discussions about whether or not that was something that our membership would it would be fine with so and i expressed that to him um and i appreciate him listening again but we we would like the opportunity to sit down and look at this a little bit closer and see if there's some way that we can make this palatable for all the cities and towns of arkansas do we have
any questions from committee members i'm seeing none thank you for your presentation
I signed up to speak for this bill, Christy Starr. If you will state your name and who you're with for the record, you may begin. My name is Christy
Speaker 191
1:15:39
Starr. I'm an election commissioner with Pulaski County. Is your mic on? I have a
Speaker 195
1:15:45
very quiet voice. Can I remove my mask? Yeah, you can. Sorry.
Thank you for having me. First, I want to state that I have some statistics, but I want to kind of state a personal story. My father is a Vietnam veteran, and we were having a conversation about the recent events. I'm sure we have lots of conversations about elections, as you can imagine. And as a Vietnam veteran, he's very interested and fascinated with elections. and he also has stage four cancer, has chemo every month.
It's in his bones, and he managed to get to the polls in November and vote. And he's pretty frustrated right now, as many are. Sorry, I got a little emotional over my father, but I will say that he states many times to many people, as I think everybody in this room probably does, is that he considers himself pretty patriotic when it comes to voting. And he tells everyone that he votes in every election has since he was old enough to vote, legal to vote.
And when I ask him this question, I'm like, so you vote in every election? Every single election? School board elections, local elections, sales tax elections? He does not vote in all those elections. He considers every election to be those federal elections, midterm elections, primary elections. And I think if we looked at everybody in the room and we looked at their voting record, we would see that we do not vote in every election.
And the question is, why is that? And I know we don't, because I'm looking at my stats, and we have an average of a 6% turnout in every election when there are local elections, especially when there's special elections school board specials some type of tax election a bond whatever it may be and that's in Pulaski County six percent some are two percent four
percent that that that sickens me and I and I I haven't voted in every election there's a time period my daughter went to Little Rock School District but I'm in Pulaski County I didn't vote in the Plassey County special election. I didn't think it was right for me to cast a ballot in that election. But when we talk about these special elections, and we ourselves are not voting in all these elections, and we know this because of our turnout being that low,
do we consider ourselves not patriotic for voting in all those elections? Because when we think about elections, we think about the big ones. so i think that we need to kind of ask ourselves that question of the why why did we not turn out for those elections we can fix that we can fix that by standardizing our elections i kind of want to talk about these stats because in pulaski we have lots of elections
And we have lots of problems. Those two are related. You know, we had some special elections that were within three weeks of a major election. Three weeks. Do you know how much preparation goes into a special election? The same preparation that goes into a regular election. Do you know how much time we need between those elections? More than three weeks?
How are we supposed to audit our election? We are trying to do some reform this session. Auditing our elections would be great. How can we do that if we have three weeks between those elections? We have elections, special elections. There was one year in 2017. We had three special elections for schools, for school boards. One of them was within one month of the actual annual school board election.
So three different school districts had special elections, and the annual school election was that year as well. In all of those special elections, there were polling sites that had nobody show up. Zero people showed up to those polling sites. Every single one of them had some two people show, four people, 14. What is this accomplishing? If the goal is for voter participation and participation in our elections,
why would we not want people coming when we have 65% turnout in a presidential, 55% average turnout in a midterm, 30% to 39% turnout in a primary? To me, the greatest form of voter suppression are special elections. if we're really serious about making our elections our priority reforming our elections establishing integrity our elections
and making sure that our our voters are aware of what's going on and when our elections are then we got to make sure that they know that they can come in november they can come in may or or March, and they're going to have all those issues on the ballot and what those issues are. And we can do that by standardizing these elections. Everybody has a right to have a voice.
And we can do this by standardizing those special elections during these dates. I'm a volunteer. I spend all my extra time as election commissioner. I do that to make sure that people have a voice. So I would like my dad to have a voice. I would like my daughter to eventually have a voice. And this would be the best way. So let's make this, the 93rd General Assembly, the one that fixes this issue. That's all I have. I'm closed to take questions.
Chair
Unverified
1:22:15
Okay, thank you for that. Representative Meeks, you're recognized
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:22:21
for a question. Thank you for being here for your testimony. Since you're heavily involved in this, obviously, the one question that I have for you is, what percentage of voter turnout do you think is required to truly get the will of the constituency? Five percent, is that enough of a turnout to really understand what the will of the people is? Is it 20 percent? What do you think, where do we need to be at to really understand the will of the citizens?
Speaker 195
1:22:48
I would hope that we would say 50 percent. I mean, when we look at what we established for our municipal elections, you know, we have to at least get 40% and with a 20% over the next candidate to determine what the result's going to be for the runoffs. So we have established thresholds for our expectations, but yet we do not have those same expectations for our special elections that actually changes policy for a long term.
so to me that's pretty serious and and i will say you know i lived in another state a state that's been talked about for a lot for the past few weeks florida um that has a extremely low sales tax rate and i did not we did not have all these special elections i'm an arkansan originally moved there and came back here but it's a it's a huge burden and also as a single mother for a very long time, we have an extremely high sales tax rate.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:23:52
I agree, and I actually do the same thing. I grew up here and went to Florida and came back because I love the state so much. So thank you again for your
Speaker 14
1:24:01
testimony being here. Thank you, Ms. Chair. Thank you.
Any more questions from committee members? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony. Thank you. Do we have anybody in the audience that would like to speak for or against this bill? Seeing none, Representative
Ray, would you like to close for your bill? Yes, Mr. Chairman, I'll make just a couple of comments in response to the testimony just to address a couple of things. I support local control.
I'm a conservative. I believe that the government that's closest to the people typically governs the best, but I'm also a supporter of good government, and it is not local control to put a property tax increase on the ballot on valentine's day like north little rock did in 2012 it's not local control to put a bond issue on the ballot 10 days before christmas like the city of little rock did the following year so um regarding the timing of bonds you know the election merely authorizes
the bond to be issued the timing can be chosen whatever is is most advantageous for that there was a point made about citizen initiatives this bill does not prevent citizen initiatives it would simply require that the dates that those elections are held are on predictable and consistent dates that are standardized throughout the calendar I appreciate everyone's thoughtful attentiveness to this issue i know it's been a long morning so with that i'll close thank you thank you what's
the will of committee representative meeks makes a motion
do pass is there any discussion on the motion seeing none all in favor say aye aye all opposed no ayes have it congratulations your bill is passed next on the agenda um representative boyd house bill 1332 there's uh an amendment on this that's being handed out uh representative boyd
as soon as that amendments everybody's got it gotten a chance to look at
Speaker 200
1:26:10
that you may present your amendment
see you coming up here yes sir if you want to give
a brief presentation of your amendment you're welcome to proceed
Speaker 206
1:26:45
uh thank you mr chair this is a cleanup of the cleanup language that goes into the bill so i would hope that someone make a motion to
adopt okay we have that motion um any discussion on that motion all in favor say aye
all opposed okay you're you may present your bill as amended
Speaker 208
1:27:07
uh thank you mr chair so this bill is to clean up and harmonize some language within our election law uh just before i start the county clerks also they're not here but the
County clerks are supportive of this bill. They've reviewed it. Mr. Naumann is going to introduce himself, and he's going to go through the details
Kurt Naumann
Unverified
1:27:30
real quick. Thank you, Representative Boyd. My name is Kurt Naumann. I'm with the Arkansas Secretary of State's office. As stated, this is just basically technical corrections and general cleanup. As you know, the election code is thicker than a big city phone book. from time to time when laws are passed certain sections are incorporated in
parts of the code and in other parts of the code they are not incorporated just because of particular maybe oversight that was missed what we're doing up amongst here are really two or three different things first is ensuring that sections of the code that have been changed from laws of past are incorporated consistently and we have some changes that we've added to the school election section that brings over the changes that occurred when law passed, changing
the dates of primary elections in presidential and non-presidential years. We've also tried to standardize some of the publication dates so that it would be easier and more consistent to do publications on the same date. So it would also be able to get rid of some of the confusion like we had a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about calculating back the number of days within an election when early voting would start and does a publication date fit within that date
what we've done here is just established a standard date for most publications so that they occur periodically and consistently across all types of elections and finally we made some changes in regard to some terminology uh changing city clerk to mayor we got the buy-in from the municipal league and they said that that was a correct change to make it should have been made prior and also providing that the filing documents are presented to the clerk's office to help them better prepare for the elections and with that the arkansas association
of counties the sbec and some of the particular counties that worked with us on these changes are all in favor of what we're doing here and i would be happy to address any questions that you may have do we have any questions from committee
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:29:49
members representative wardlaw you're recognized so just one more time mr kurt can you tell me exactly what the notification changes is i mean what you said just then was basically technical corrections but what are the date changes that
Speaker 211
1:30:00
that you're changing? Yes, Representative Wardlaw, what we are changing is to a consistent date that will
Kurt Naumann
Unverified
1:30:07
be eight days prior to the beginning of early voting. And early voting would be for primary elections and general elections. So what is that today? It depends on the section of the code. There's some that say 15 days prior to the start of voting and some that say 10 days prior to the start of voting. So what you're doing
Speaker 212
1:30:25
is unifying that to eight days all the way across? Yes, sir.
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:30:29
Okay, that's an easy way to explain it.
Representative Michelle Gray
Unverified
1:30:31
Thank you. Representative Gray, you're recognized for questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm sitting here reading this. Let me find it. Page 3, line 34 in Section 5, concerning public notice of elections. So we're repealing the right to object to the service of an election
Speaker 216
1:30:55
official? Deputy? Representative Gray, what we've done is we've struck that language and moved it up to lines
Kurt Naumann
Unverified
1:31:01
23 and 24. So what we did there was we wanted to make sure that the directions were
part of that original publication for clarity. Okay, thank you. I missed
that. Thank you. Okay, seeing no more questions. We have anybody here to speak for or against this
bill? Seeing none. Representative Boyd, would you like to close
Speaker 206
1:31:25
for your bill? I'm closed, and I hope someone
will give me a due pass. Okay. We have a motion due pass as amended. Any discussion on that motion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Congratulations.
Your bill is passed. Yes. Representative Lundstrom has House Bill 1338. You're recognized to present your bill. yes you were
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
1:32:08
recognized thank you chairman um colleagues i'm sure you all remember a very
recent election called the presidential election this last fall you can imagine the shock though when we started getting all of us probably started getting phone calls when people couldn't find their presidential candidate on the ballot, probably because there were 13 different presidential candidates. And people were confused. Some of them had to go to the second page to find the presidential candidate of their choice. And I began to look up why we had 13 different presidential candidates. Turns out our law for running for president as an independent or as a
different party not Republican or Democrat hadn't been updated since the early late 1969. You had to have only a thousand signatures to run for president. So this has created a lot of confusion. Just to give you an idea, if you want to run for a Supreme Court justice, you have to have 10,000 signatures. If you want to run for a justice of appeals, it's 2,000 and on the way down. This simply updates that law to say if you're going to run for president in the state of Arkansas, you need to have at least 5,000 signatures.
That's all it does. Okay. Any questions from committee members? Okay. Well, we have someone to sign up to speak against this. Andrew Waldron, if you would make your way to the end of the table and introduce
Andrew Waldron
Unverified
1:33:45
yourself for the record, please. You may begin. Thank you, Chair. My name is Andrew Waldron. I'm here today representing the Green Party. I'm here to
speak against this bill because, well, first off, it quintuples our ballot access drive for the next election cycle, and rather not. Second of all, I've personally never heard of any confusion regarding our our candidate regarding candidates on the ballot um as far as i know there are minuscule i can't say none because i haven't talked to everyone uh people who go to
the polls not knowing who they wish to speak for or vote for apologize um and i do not and i do not I believe that confusion is rampant to warrant this sudden increase in polling. I also do that.
I'm sorry, I sometimes get tongue-tied, so you'll have to bear with my stutter a little bit. one thing that's come up from other bills is I believe is that I believe that we want to increase turn turnout and participation I I can speak well I can't speak for myself I do know other members in my party that are green or bust. And while I cannot extrapolate that to across the state, I do believe that making
candidates not preferred by either Democrat or Republican, making that bar higher and therefore were less likely to get on, could have ramifications to decreased turnout. And as far as I am aware, I do not believe that there has been a frivolous, the only frivolous candidate, I believe, who's gotten any sort of widespread attention in the past
like three election cycles, is Kanye West. So I do not think that would be an issue as well. But yeah, pretty much in conclusion, I have faith that when voters go to the polls, they know who they're looking for. If they don't see them on the first page, I believe they can get assistance getting to the second page i did hear a little bit about that from some of my
democrat friends who were like we were on the second page couple of us got stumped a couple of times but it was never it was never to the point of yeah so we so yeah we just couldn't do it so i don't so i i believe our in our voters confidence i am open to questions now thank you Any questions from committee members? Seeing none, thank
Speaker 172
1:37:08
you for your testimony. Thank you, Chair. Is there anyone else in the audience
who wants to speak for or against this? Okay, seeing none, what's the will of the committee?
I'm sorry, do you want to close for your bill? Okay, let's take that motion, do pass, and move on. Any discussion on that motion? Okay, all in favor, say aye. All opposed, congratulations, your bill is passed. Thank you, colleagues. on the list, Representative Dotson, House Bill 1356. Representative Dotson, you may
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
1:37:54
Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. House Bill 1356 is an
act to amend the process of evaluation of state boards and commissions. So where this bill started 16, 18 months ago, I became aware, made aware of this section of our statute that required boards and commissions to submit a report to legislative council and the joint performance review committee of their, when they convened regular meetings and when they failed to
convene regular meetings. By August 1st of each even numbered year, if you look at that on page two of the bill, you see that's the existing language, and went to try to find some of those reports and discovered that no one had filed any of these reports for going back 20 years or so. there there had never been one and so um that initiated the process trying to reach out to
those boards and commissions and say hey where's your report um and the response that came back said uh if you look at the top of page two line one it says if a part-time state board or commission has not so they all considered themselves part-time and exempt from this So this would strike the language part-time and just require all of them to submit the report that they have regular meetings so that JPR can evaluate the purpose, need, or effectiveness of
the state board or commission and put into process, if you look at page two and page three, a little bit more detail on the process that JPR would have to go through or get to go through to evaluate the purpose, need, or effectiveness of the State Border Commission. And by the end of the year, if they determine that there's really no need for that full or part-time State Border Commission, make a recommendation to legislative council to have legislation drafted for the
upcoming session to consider whether or not to continue that state board or commission or end it. And with that, I'll take any questions. Representative Wardlaw, you're
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:40:24
recognized for questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Dodson, is there
a particular board or commission that's not complying or one that you want to see a report from? No.
Chair
Unverified
1:40:40
okay any other questions representative gene you're recognized along that same line thank you
mr chairman uh do you anticipating us losing any boards and commissions on this legislation
Chair
Unverified
1:40:53
honestly i don't know uh if you look
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
1:40:57
at the previous original language of this it talks about whether or not a board has convened without a quorum for four consecutive regularly scheduled meeting dates. So really this is kind of an effort to look at which ones are not meeting, whether we really need to have them in existence. There's a ton of boards and commissions out there,
I can't name them all, but if this is a requirement that we put into place and the board or commission is not meeting on any type of a regular basis, why do
we need to continue their existence. Follow up? So I'm assuming if they're not meeting, there's no purpose in them. I agree with that. But if the board and commission is dissolved, I guess their oversight will be the secretary that's under their
Chair
Unverified
1:41:47
preview would look after them? More than likely,
just depending on the jurisdiction that they're under. But you're
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
1:41:53
not aware of any that are not meeting at all? I'm not aware of any, this is not an effort on anyone in particular or any group of them. This will just hopefully bring those to the level or to the attention of JPR. The ones that aren't meeting and don't conduct any business, then we probably don't need, we can evaluate them at that time and then determine whether to continue them or discontinue them and clean up the code
and get rid of an excess board or commission that's not doing anything. Thank
you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Seeing no other questions, we have nobody signed up to speak for or against this. Anybody in the audience like to? Seeing none, Representative Dodson, are you
closed for your bill? I'm closed. Make a motion to do pass. Okay. Have a motion to do pass. Any discussion on that motion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Congratulations. Your bill is passed. Committee, thank you for staying with me and beating these bills to death today, and we are adjourned.
Agenda
No agenda available.
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Speaker 1
Representative Rick Beck Chair
Unverified
Representative Marcus E. Richmond Chair
Unverified
Speaker 14
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
Speaker 18
Speaker 19
Chair
Unverified
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
Speaker 30
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
Speaker 27
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
Representative John Payton
Unverified
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 53
Speaker 100
Representative David Whitaker
Unverified
Speaker 43
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
Speaker 129
Eldon Alec
Unverified
Speaker 131
Representative Lane Jean Chair
Unverified
Speaker 140
Speaker 143
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
Speaker 151
Speaker 155
Speaker 166
Representative David Ray Chair
Unverified
Speaker 180
Representative Kendon Underwood
Unverified
Speaker 189
Speaker 191
Speaker 195
Speaker 200
Speaker 206
Speaker 208
Kurt Naumann
Unverified
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
Speaker 211
Speaker 212
Representative Michelle Gray
Unverified
Speaker 216
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
Andrew Waldron
Unverified
Speaker 172
Speaker 37