Agriculture, Forestry & Economic Development- House
Video
Transcript
1 document
Machine transcript
May contain errors. Verify important quotations against the official video.
About transcript accuracy
- Source
- Whisper
- Model
- ggml-large-v3-turbo.bin RTX5060
- Processing date
- October 7, 2026
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
0:00
meeting to order. Welcome to the House Agriculture. Did you find your seat? Welcome to the House Agriculture, Forestry, and Economic Development Committee. I'm Representative Vaught, and I'm honored to be able to be the chair of this committee this time around, and I look forward to us having a great session. We'll start with Representative Link, who is our vice chair, and We'll go around the room, and everybody can introduce them. Lynch, sorry, you're not Lync.
Speaker 3
0:31
Lynch. So we'll go around the room. Everybody introduce where you're from
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
0:38
and a little bit about yourself. I'm Roger Lynch. I'm from District 14, which is
Representative Roger D. Lynch
Unverified
0:49
England, Lone Oak, Carlisle, Hunnoak, Wabaseka, Humphrey, those little towns south, mostly farm country. So I'm pleased with the opportunity to serve on this committee.
My son's a farmer, and I don't know where he got that gene from. He didn't get it from me. But I am definitely interested in the industry and look forward to being able to help those folks at work and divers. So it's hard work with very little paying a lot of risk. but anyway that's the
Speaker 11
1:28
deal thanks Ron McNair district 98 parts of Boone and Carroll County this will be my fourth term on ag and I
kind of like Roger but I have an auto repair business and most of my customers are farmers and most of my district are ag-related so that's the reason I've always enjoyed being on this committee
Speaker 13
1:54
Jack Fortner, District 99. That's Marion, parts of Boone, Baxter, and Searcy. It's clear up the north borders on Missouri. I've got two dogs, three cats, and a chicken.
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
2:11
I'm Bruce Coleman, District 81. He's got Crawford in Washington County, parts in northwest Arkansas. Had a little agriculture interest for a long time. I'm Steve Hollowell from
Representative Steve Hollowell
Unverified
2:26
District 49, which covers parts of Cross County, St. Francis County, and Monroe County, so it's a lot of agri in my area, so, and this is my second term on this committee, so I'm glad to be here.
Representative Carlton Wing
Unverified
2:44
I'm Carlton Wing. I'm in the middle of Pulaski County. I proudly represent every square foot garden in North Little Rock and Sherwood. Happy to be here. very interested in the economic development
Speaker 21
2:59
aspect of this committee as well and happy to be on
Speaker 22
3:03
this committee again. I'm Stan Berry. I represent District 68, which is about
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
3:08
the middle of Pope County and the top part of Van Buren County, and I look forward to serving with everyone.
Speaker 26
3:17
I'm Les Eves, I represent District 46, basically just Searcy and Kinsett. I'm the Vice President of our family business called Delta Trailers. We're celebrating our 50th anniversary this year of the company my dad started and we build all kinds of trailers. One of the product lines we build is horse and livestock and we sell those all over the country. So hear a lot of different stories related to agriculture nationwide. So appreciate being on the committee.
Speaker 28
3:47
I'm David Hillman, representing District 13, which is most of Arkansas and Prairie Counties, part of White and Lone Oak Counties, and I'm a farmer.
Representative Ken Bragg
Unverified
4:06
Ken Bragg, represent District 15, which covers part of Hot Spring, most of Grant and Jefferson County, and enjoyed continue serving on this forestry committee. I'm a retired forester, spent over 40 years in industrial production and forest
management, and I look forward to dealing with some of those issues. We'll see some of
Representative Richard Womack
Unverified
4:35
them this term. Hey, I'm Richard Womack. I represent District 18, which is parts of Dallas, Clark, Hot
Speaker 22
4:46
Spring, and Garland Counties. Broke it. I'm Joe Jett, representing District 56. I'm off a family farm. We farm rice, soybeans, corn.
My son's farms now, and I'm just trying to play around and do a little
Speaker 37
5:05
part-time crop dusting now on cross-rice farms. Steve McGee, District 72. Two, that's Faulkner County, just part of the county. We actually have about 160,000 people now in Faulkner County. Most of, I know everybody on this committee, what most of y'all may not know, I do have an agricultural interest, grew up in the farming industry. Managed about 3,000 acres down in Representative Lynch's district that my family owns.
Like Representative Vaught, I'm sure she probably has this too, but what you don't know about me is from ADEQ, I have a license. I'm a certified liquid manure application specialist. So I have a lot of agricultural interest in my background and also interested in economic development. I'm
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
5:57
John Eubanks, District 74. It's Logan County, parts of Franklin, Sebastian, and Scott County.
I was a poultry grower for 38 years and still have cattle operation. And I'm glad to be back on this committee. I'm
Representative Stu Smith
Unverified
6:19
Brant Smith from Jonesboro, Arkansas, but mostly an urban setting. but we're bordered by a lot of farm ground up in Craighead County. I actually wanted to get a DVM behind my name as a young student at Colorado State University
and just couldn't do it. But today my day job is associate professor in the School of Business at Liberty University. And I'm glad to be on this program. I know how to milk cows and haul hay and
Speaker 42
6:55
all the good things that go along with that life, having grown
Speaker 43
7:03
up in that area. Thank you. I'm Harlan Breaux. I live in Holiday Island, Arkansas. The 97th District, I have part of Carroll County, Madison, and Washington County.
And this is my second time on this committee. I'm glad
Representative Cameron Cooper
Unverified
7:24
to be here. Thank you. Representative Cameron Cooper, I represent District 44, that's portions of Lone Oak, Faulkner,
and White County. My brother and I work with our 84-year-old dad, toughest guy I know, who's raised cattle his whole life. We run a 665-acre hay and cattle operation, raised registered red-angles cattle, so got a great deal of interest in agriculture and glad
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
7:47
to be on this committee. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Denise Ennett. I represent District 36. I am a city girl. I live downtown Little Rock. Proud of it. I'm glad to be on this committee to learn more about agriculture. I do have a lot of rural area in Pulaski County in my district, so hopefully I can take some of this stuff I learned and help some of my constituents. Thank you.
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
8:18
And then I'm Diane Vaught, and I serve District 4, which is Severe, Little River, and Howard, which is all farmland. There's nothing but farmers down there. And we have about 1,000 acres. We have 12 chicken houses, a dairy, and a hog farm, and we raise some trees. So that's what I do for our industry. So let's introduce our staff, Mr. John Jones. You want to tell a little bit about yourself, Mr. Jones? I'm John Jones.
Speaker 53
8:49
I'll be your committee analyst, and I look forward
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
8:53
to working with you all. And then
Speaker 54
8:57
we have Ms. Rosemary Johnson. Hello, Rosemary Johnson with
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
9:01
the BLR staff. Looking forward to the committee. And then Ms. Cassie Howell will be our attorney that helps write our legislation. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Jill Thatcher, if you'll come to the end of the table. and
then we'll let you present about the committee rules and stuff
Speaker 56
9:21
thank you madam chair jill thayer bureau of legislative research um if you cannot understand me i will remove my mask but i'm going to try to leave it on uh representative vaught asked that i be here just to hit some of the high points in the new committee procedures that your House Rules Committee just adopted today. I'm just going to go over with you the parts that are pertinent to how you will see your agendas for this
committee and getting your bills on committees and getting them heard. So there are a few changes. The Speaker and several other members of the leadership of your chamber, along with leadership in the Senate started working late this summer to come up with procedures for dealing with all the limitations that we experienced due to the pandemic. And so what was decided on are the rules that I think you've all seen. But some of the major changes do affect how agendas are being
made. And the purpose for these changes was to provide more predictability to the public of what they will hear when they come up here when they need to come if they're interested in specific bills so your agendas this time are rather than every bill that's referred to your committee appearing on your agenda once a bill is referred to a committee it's going to appear on what's called the referred items list and that list is on the website each committee will have a list and it shows every bill referred to them your chair will work with the sponsors of those bills
to pull items off that list to create your agendas. So the agendas are going to look a little bit more like what you're used to for an interim committee meeting where whatever's on the agenda hopefully is what you're going to get to that day. And there are going to be three categories of bills on your agendas. There's going to be what's called the regular agenda, the consent agenda, and then deferred bills, which you're used to seeing on there. If you are sponsoring a bill and you are ready to run that bill and committee. It's on you to contact the chair of the committee and work with the chair to let
them know a date that you are available to run your bill and committee. You need to give the chair an estimate of the amount of time you think that bill will take to be heard, how many witnesses you plan to bring with you to committee, and whether or not there's any known opposition to that bill. And the purpose of that is to help the chair determine if you're meeting on the next, what is today, Wednesday, on the next Monday, how many bills can they get on that agenda and
realistically think that you can accomplish in the amount of time that you have. So once the chair is contacted by the sponsors, then she will set the agenda. She'll work with staff to set that up. If you have a bill that's a technical corrections bill or just a bill that there's no known opposition to that and you feel that it's going to go through very easily, you can request that your bill be placed on the consent agenda. So what will happen with the consent agenda items is at the beginning of a meeting where there is a consent agenda
item, the chair will draw the attention of the committee members to that list and then state without objection, these bills are going to be on the consent agenda. If any one member of the committee objects, then the bill won't be put on the consent agenda. It will just go back to the referred items list, and then the sponsor will just need to work with the chair to get on the regular agenda. Being placed on the consent agenda doesn't change anything about how the bill is handled once it's presented. It still goes through the same process of discussion
and voting. It just allows those bills to sit on your agenda until you're ready to take them up. All agendas under these rules are required to be posted 18 hours prior to the meeting where they'll be taken up. There is a provision in the rules that allows for suspension of that 18 hours by two-thirds vote of your committee. That's the only rule under these new committee procedures that can be suspended by the committee, the rest of them have to go through the chamber for
suspension. So that would allow some expediency in how you're making your agenda if there was something that you weren't able to do the 18 hours. With regard to who's going to be in the committee room with you, the rules require that physical distancing be maintained. And so the only members of the public that will be allowed in the committee room are the ones that are here to testify on the bill that's currently being heard each committee room has a public comment
holding room that's assigned to it for this room it's room 149 which is right back there so anyone else who's signed up to speak and they're waiting for the bill to be called up that's where they'll wait and your redcoats are stationed to bring the people from that room once the bill's coming up other than that there is seating available in here and your redcoats have been trained on who to allow in two to three members of the press, and they'll have little press credentials that we've made for them, as well as limited seating for agencies. Those individuals
can be here for the whole meeting. Under the rules, lobbyists are considered to be members of the public, and so they are only to be in the room when they're testifying on a bill. There is additional public seating set out in the Capitol up on the fourth floor, so So individuals who maybe aren't testifying, but they want to be here and be part of the process, maybe they're waiting to meet with one of y'all, they'll be directed to that area. And then the only other thing that I would touch on out of these rules for y'all that's important for you to know is there is a remote participation component to these rules.
It allows a member of the committee to participate via Zoom, but only if that member is either a high-risk individual who's at high risk for severe illness from COVID-19, if they are the caretaker of someone who's high risk or have a household member who's high risk, or if they have tested positive or are otherwise required to quarantine because they're a close contact. now we all have to go through the health screening every day to come in and get the band if you were
to fail that health screening in the morning if you're running a temperature or something then you can request to participate remotely if you're participating remotely as a member of this committee you count towards the quorum you can vote you can ask questions participate in debate but the rules require that you be seen and heard while you're doing that so that we can tell that it is you and you're the one doing it. Your house staff is setting up Zoom links to handle all of that. If for some reason you are unintentionally disconnected from the Zoom and you cannot get back
on, then it's your responsibility if you want to continue to participate to contact the chair while the meeting's going on and let her know that you want to continue to participate but you can't get back on Zoom. She'll put it to the committee for a vote of whether or not to allow you to participate only by phone. If a majority of the committee agrees to that, then you'll be allowed to do that without being seen, but it would only be for that meeting where the vote was taken and not all subsequent meetings. Agency personnel can testify remotely only if you have requested that
a specific person be here to testify in front of you and they are having to quarantine or they failed the health screening. So those are sort of the high points and I'll answer any
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
17:21
questions. Does anyone have any questions for Ms. Thayer? Thank you for coming and explaining all that to us. We appreciate your time. You're
welcome. All right, so one other thing that she didn't discuss is that you'll be responsible to bring your own devices
to pull up your agenda on and all the bills on. Those will not be, like usually when you come to committee, they had tablets out for us. We're not going to have those tablets out, and there will be no paper out. You'll just need to bring your own devices. We're going to meet in this room on Mondays and Wednesdays at 2 o'clock or upon adjournment of the House. We do need a quorum to be present for each meeting to begin. The quorum is 11 people. Agendas are prepared two days in advance,
so sponsor notifications will be sent to members who have bills on the agenda two days before the committee meeting. Sponsor notices are sent by email. Amendments should be in writing. Please let the staff know before the meeting if you have an amendment. And then I know that we have some people from different agencies here, and we've allotted a little bit of time for you all to go ahead and stand and tell who you are and who you're with.
Speaker 2
18:45
Thank you, Madam Chair. my name is kelly robbins and i'm with the arkansas rice federation we represent all things
Kelly Robbins
Unverified
18:51
rice here in arkansas and certainly working with you thank you
Speaker 65
18:58
chair uh andrew grubbiron with the agricultural council of arkansas and we're an industry, non-profit, trade organization that represents.
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
20:03
thank you all for coming today does anybody have anything else that they want to add yes sir mr barry representative barry yes madam
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
20:19
chair i'd just like to know why lynn pitcock has more dots than the rest of these people i'm a little worried about that
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
20:30
myself and with that this meeting is adjourned
So I just messed up toot-till. I knew it was fair, but it's not what come out of my mouth. I was like, oh, crud.
Agenda
No agenda available.
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT- HOUSE, Jan 13, 2021 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
Speaker 3
Representative Roger D. Lynch
Unverified
Speaker 11
Speaker 13
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
Representative Steve Hollowell
Unverified
Representative Carlton Wing
Unverified
Speaker 21
Speaker 22
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
Speaker 26
Speaker 28
Representative Ken Bragg
Unverified
Representative Richard Womack
Unverified
Speaker 37
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
Representative Stu Smith
Unverified
Speaker 42
Speaker 43
Representative Cameron Cooper
Unverified
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
Speaker 53
Speaker 54
Speaker 56
Speaker 2
Kelly Robbins
Unverified
Speaker 65