Insurance & Commerce- House
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Bills discussed (20)
| Bill | Title | Sponsor | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
|
SB621
· 5 mentions in agenda, chapter, transcript
Matched: “…LECTRIC GENERATION FACILITIES; AND TO DECLARE AN EMERGENCY. SB621 Irvin TO CLARIFY ENFORCEMENT PROVISIONS AGAINST A HEALTHCAR…”
|
TO CLARIFY ENFORCEMENT PROVISIONS AGAINST A HEALTHCARE INSURER; TO RETROACTIVELY APPLY TO A HEALTHCARE CONTRACT … | Irvin | Died in House at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB483
Act 957
· 3 mentions in transcript, chapter
Matched: “…ank you, Senator Missy Urban District 24. Good morning. Um, Senate Bill 483 is uh an efficiency bill, uh, the, we looked at the committ…”
|
TO REPEAL CERTAIN REPORTING REQUIREMENTS FOR THE STATE INSURANCE DEPARTMENT AND THE STATE SECURITIES DEPARTMENT; … | Irvin | Notification that SB483 is now Act 957 |
|
HB1009
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…AND ENTITLEMENT HOLDERS UNDER THE UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE. HB1009 A. Collins TO ALLOW PREGNANCY TO BE A QUALIFYING EVENT FOR…”
|
TO ALLOW PREGNANCY TO BE A QUALIFYING EVENT FOR ENROLLMENT IN CERTAIN HEALTH BENEFIT PLANS. | A. Collins | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1014
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “HB1014 A. Collins TO REQUIRE COVERAGE OF IN VITRO FERTILIZATION UN…”
|
TO REQUIRE COVERAGE OF IN VITRO FERTILIZATION UNDER THE STATE AND PUBLIC SCHOOL LIFE AND … | A. Collins | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1354
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…TO REGULATE SECURITY MEASURES AT RETAIL CONVENIENCE STORES. HB1354 Lundstrum TO REGULATE PHARMACY BENEFITS MANAGERS; TO AMEND…”
|
TO REGULATE PHARMACY BENEFITS MANAGERS; TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING THE STATE AND PUBLIC SCHOOL … | Lundstrum | Recommended for study in the Interim by the … |
|
HB1408
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…RY PRACTICES; AND TO PROVIDE FOR ENFORCEMENT OF VIOLATIONS. HB1408 Pilkington TO ALLOW QUALIFYING PATIENTS OR DESIGNATED CAREG…”
|
TO ALLOW QUALIFYING PATIENTS OR DESIGNATED CAREGIVERS TO PURCHASE MEDICAL MARIJUANA USING A FLEXIBLE SPENDING … | Pilkington | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1409
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…STATE AND PUBLIC SCHOOL LIFE AND HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAM. HB1409 Long TO AMEND THE LAW REGARDING ENERGY; AND TO CREATE THE E…”
|
TO AMEND THE LAW REGARDING ENERGY; AND TO CREATE THE ELECTRIC RELIABILITY ACT. | Long | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1443
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…RRENT ASSESSED VALUE OF A RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE PROPERTY. HB1443 Pilkington TO CREATE THE SECOND AMENDMENT FINANCIAL PRIVACY…”
|
TO CREATE THE SECOND AMENDMENT FINANCIAL PRIVACY ACT; TO PROHIBIT FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND PAYMENT NETWORKS … | Pilkington | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1659
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…rs and Staff Only'. DEFERRED BILLS Number Sponsor Subtitle HB1659 S. Meeks TO AMEND THE UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE; AND TO CLARI…”
|
TO AMEND THE UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE; AND TO CLARIFY THE PRIORITY AMONG SECURITY INTERESTS AND … | S. Meeks | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1746
Act 997
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…m Wooten CONCUR IN SENATE AMENDMENT Number Sponsor Subtitle HB1746 M. Brown TO AMEND THE UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE. REGULAR AGEN…”
|
TO AMEND THE UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE. | M. Brown | Notification that HB1746 is now Act 997 |
|
HB1868
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…NG A FLEXIBLE SPENDING ACCOUNT OR A HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNT. HB1868 L. Johnson TO REQUIRE AN INSURER TO PAY A FAIR AND REASONAB…”
|
TO REQUIRE AN INSURER TO PAY A FAIR AND REASONABLE SERVICE FEE DIRECTLY TO A … | L. Johnson | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1905
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…D TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING CERTAIN HEALTH BENEFIT PLANS. HB1905 Lundstrum TO CREATE THE BUYER BEWARE ACT; AND TO REQUIRE A…”
|
TO CREATE THE BUYER BEWARE ACT; AND TO REQUIRE A REAL ESTATE LICENSEE REPRESENTING A … | Lundstrum | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB331
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…ORM COMMERCIAL CODE. REGULAR AGENDA Number Sponsor Subtitle SB331 G. Leding CONCERNING COVERAGE FOR GENETIC TESTING FOR INHER…”
|
CONCERNING COVERAGE FOR GENETIC TESTING FOR INHERITED CANCER MUTATIONS; AND TO CREATE THE GENETIC TESTING … | G. Leding | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB437
Act 945
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “SB437 Hester TO CREATE THE ARKANSAS WIND ENERGY DEVELOPMENT ACT.”
|
TO CREATE THE ARKANSAS WIND ENERGY DEVELOPMENT ACT. | Hester | Notification that SB437 is now Act 945 |
|
SB583
Act 990
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…REPORTING REQUIREMENTS FOR THE STATE INSURANCE DEPARTMENT. SB583 C. Tucker TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE COS…”
|
TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE COST LISTS RELATING TO PHARMACY SERVICES. | C. Tucker | Notification that SB583 is now Act 990 |
|
SB596
Act 940
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE COST LISTS RELATING TO PHARMACY SERVICES. SB596 M. McKee TO AMEND THE LAW REGARDING ENERGY; TO ESTABLISH A…”
|
TO AMEND THE LAW REGARDING ENERGY; TO ESTABLISH A STATE ENERGY POLICY; TO REGULATE RETIREMENT … | M. McKee | Notification that SB596 is now Act 940 |
|
SB602
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “SB602 Crowell TO PROHIBIT INSURANCE COMPANIES AND APPRAISERS FROM…”
|
TO PROHIBIT INSURANCE COMPANIES AND APPRAISERS FROM REQUIRING AN INSURED TO USE CERTAIN FACILITIES TO … | Crowell | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB603
· 2 mentions in transcript
Matched: “…nt back, uh, several times and watched the testimony for uh SB 603, which eventually became”
|
TO CREATE EMMA'S LAW; AND TO REQUIRE AN AIR AMBULANCE TO CONTACT THE ARKANSAS TRAUMA … | C. Tucker | Died in House at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1159
· 1 mention in chapter
Matched: “HB1159 J. Richardson TO CREATE THE RETAIL CONVENIENCE STORE SECURI…”
|
TO CREATE THE RETAIL CONVENIENCE STORE SECURITY ACT; AND TO REGULATE SECURITY MEASURES AT RETAIL … | J. Richardson | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB639
· 1 mention in chapter
Matched: “SB639 Caldwell TO CREATE THE ARKANSAS WIND ENERGY DEVELOPMENT ACT…”
|
TO CREATE THE ARKANSAS WIND ENERGY DEVELOPMENT ACT. | Caldwell | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
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Chair
Unverified
0:00
Try and get through it today, and I believe Senator Irvin has a
couple bills she'd like to run. Yes. Can we get Senator Irvin, excuse me. I believe, Senator, you have 483 and 621.
Chair
Unverified
0:33
Is that correct? Would you like to start with 483? Yes, sir.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
0:40
Okay. Just go ahead and introduce yourself for the record, and you may proceed with your testimony. Thank you. Senator Missy Urban, District 24, good morning. Senate Bill 483 is an efficiency bill. We looked at the committee, the Insurance and Commerce Committee on the Senate side, looked at, worked with the insurance department about the different reports that they are doing that were statutorily created, and so this is an efficiency bill to really get rid of some of the
reports or to move them to a more annual report basis. And so this is a bill that, like I said, I'm actually running it for Senator Johnson, who's the chair of the Insurance and Commerce Committee in the Senate asked me to work on this. So it's streamlining some of these reports that the department does or removing them altogether because they're either out of date or they've not been accessed by the members of the General Assembly. So the insurance department can come
here and speak specifically, I'm sure, about each one of the reports and kind of what their recommendation was and how they came to that recommendation. But this piece of legislation is based on their recommendation at the direction of Senator Hester and Senator Johnson. Thank you for your presentation. Is there anyone
Chair
Unverified
2:03
from the insurance department who could come to the table and speak on this?
Speaker 12
2:19
Just introduce yourselves for the record and proceed with
Speaker 14
2:32
your testimony. Al McLean, State Insurance Commissioner, and with me is Crystal Phelps, attorney at the insurance department. So she's worked with us, and Senator Irvin, and Senator Johnson. It was just as Senator Irvin explained, there were several reports that were brought to our attention that either we had not been utilized that much
or we'd do an annual report anyway to the General Assembly and to the governor's office. And so that has a whole lot of insurance industry data in it in terms of just market share of insurance companies and the number and names of insurance companies doing business in our state. That is a really good compendium and compilation of the industry. So there are some of these that have been recommended to keep. We're just going to roll into that particular report.
So nothing particularly controversial about any of it, I don't think. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you for your testimony. Any
Chair
Unverified
3:34
questions from the committee? Representative Wooten, you recognize for a question. I
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
3:43
don't have a question. I have a motion at the appropriate time. Thank you, sir. Reverend Lundstrom, are you good? Yes, sir. I was just
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
3:51
going to do the same. Motion at the proper time. Okay.
Chair
Unverified
3:58
No further testimonies. Anyone in the audience would like to speak against this bill? Anyone else would like to speak for
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
4:07
this bill? You recognize to close for your bill. I'm closed. I appreciate the work from the department working with us on these reports. Happy to have
Chair
Unverified
4:16
a good vote. I'm closed. Thank you, Senator. Representative Wooten, you're recognized. Make a motion. Do pass. We have a motion. Do pass. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any
opposed, say no. Congratulations. You have passed your bill. Thank you.
Since you're there at the end of the table,
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
4:38
would you like to proceed with
621? Yes. Members, this is SB 621. Senator Missy Irvin, District 24, Senate Bill 621. Members, let me explain the genesis of this bill, and I know that there's probably opposition to it because they don't want to pay for the services that have already been rendered. But back during COVID and the Trump administration at the time,
actually there was bipartisan support in Congress to allow for facilities that were not traditional hospitals to become temporary hospitals. It was a federal program called Hospitals Without Walls, and it was a federal program that was designated by the CMS at the time under the Trump administration. So I passed a piece of legislation based on an executive order from Governor Hutchinson, and then I followed up with legislation to allow our facilities, health care facilities, to become temporary hospitals.
At the time during COVID, if you'll recall, you had a big ship that was parked outside of New York City. Franklin Graham and Samaritan's Purse set up, you know, temporary hospitals. And so we didn't know what the need was going to be with hospitalizations, particularly when COVID first occurred. And as you recall, there was a tremendous impact to our hospitals here locally. Many times you couldn't find a bed, et cetera, et cetera.
So the idea behind the program was to allow an ambulatory surgery center or other health care facility that would participate in the program be able to be designated as a temporary hospital. So what that meant was they had to go through and comply with all federal regulations and state regulations through the Department of Health and CMS to seek that designation. So they had to provide 24-hour nursing. they had to really transition into a hospital and so several facilities in the state of Arkansas
did that but we passed legislation to allow them to do that and to say that they would be paid if they did that. That would be the reasonable thought. However that they did all of that but they were never paid and so what's frustrating for me as a member of the General Assembly is to pass a law that you think is going to work but then doesn't work and then to come back and have to now pass this bill to say hey if they're going to jump through all those hoops and they're going
to have to do all of that at the federal level and at the state level and we have passed a law that says guess what if they meet all these requirements and they do all these things then they should be paid for the services that they render under this temporary hospital designation and that's really what the bill does in front of you, and I would argue that I wish they had just followed the law as had been passed, and then we wouldn't have to be here today, but that did not occur.
So here I am with this bill, and I'm happy to answer any
Chair
Unverified
7:49
questions. Thank you for your testimony. Questions from
the committee? Representative Eves, you're recognized for a question. Thank you. Senator, how many temporary
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
8:02
hospitals do we have in Arkansas? At the time, I think there may have only
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
8:12
are we going? Well, it was under Governor Hutchinson's administration,
so this was during the COVID time period, and so this occurred during this temporary time frame. occurred um
in 20 i believe 2023 and so you're saying that a health insurer yes hasn't
Representative Les D. Eaves
Unverified
8:30
paid these one or two temporary hospitals since covid
yes that is that like going to be blue cross and better since is it yes is there anybody from those
groups that can tell us why they haven't
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
8:49
paid i think that they uh disagreed with the way that the law they said that the law um didn't have a start date or something i'm not quite sure but um they took it to court and the court said well there just needs to be a clarification in the law okay so that's why i'm here i'm trying to clarify the
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
9:16
law that i passed representative wootton you're recognized i don't know whether this questions of Senator Irwin or you, but do we have a, does it have a fiscal impact
and do we have a statement? Is there any fiscal impact on this? I
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
9:32
believe at the time we excluded EBD, so there would not be a fiscal impact or Medicaid.
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
9:42
I'm sorry, I didn't understand. EBD
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
9:45
would be self-insured, was excluded, and Medicaid, so at the time we did not have fiscal impact. Okay. Thank you.
Chair
Unverified
9:55
Thank you, Representative Wharton. Any further questions? Representative Acre, if you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Sonia Eubanks Barker
Unverified
10:01
Thank you, Senator. So would you agree that the services rendered were the same, like, CPT code or billing code? I mean, the services were identical, it's just the physical location that they received care is what they're in question of? Yes. Okay. And so what you're trying to achieve here is that an insurance company agreed to reimburse these services for the member who paid for them, and now they're disputing that because of an address?
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
10:27
Well, we passed a law that says that this would occur and that they could participate. Why participate if you're not going to get paid? Right. So we created the law. I don't know if they agreed or not, but we passed the law that says this is what's going to happen.
Representative Sonia Eubanks Barker
Unverified
10:45
Well, and I would argue that in their contracts, they agreed to cover those services.
Representative Aker
Unverified
10:49
It's just now they're disputing that they have the ability to decline that based on some sort
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
10:55
of arbitrary definition of address. Perhaps, yes. Okay. I'll let them speak for themselves.
Thank you for bringing this. Yes, thank you. At the end of the day, and I'll just say this, I think it's really important that we have these programs at the federal level for these types of designations in case we do find ourselves in a really bad situation. And that was the purpose behind the program, the designation, and for me to say, okay, the state of Arkansas is going to recognize this and our health care facilities can participate in it. Well, why would you participate in something that we need if you're not going to get paid, you know, to do it? I mean, that's just insanity to me.
So I tried to pass the bill, tried to make sure that it was very, very crystal clear, and that would make common sense to everybody in here and the world that if you're going to become a temporary hospital, then you should be able to be paid for the care that you give to the patients that save their lives. I mean,
that just seems common sense to me. But apparently, you know, there was not, that's not
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
12:01
Lundstrom, did you have a question? Yeah. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. Did we exclude EBD in the original bill?
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
12:09
I believe I did, yes. I believe we did do that just because of the fiscal impact. And the insurance
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
12:16
companies that are choosing not to pay right now, they know this is due and it's been to court, correct? I believe that's correct. Do you
know what the court, for sure, I'm a little bit lost of why we wouldn't just pay the bill go on instead of going to
court and attorneys that type of thing and then are we the bill would say we would be on the hook for it not the
Speaker 58
12:40
insurance companies no no no no the the state of arkansas
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
12:43
is not the state of arkansas is just the arbitrator
of the policy we we're just saying yes we recognize that
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
12:52
and you need to pay the bill we recognize that the health care health care facilities that are ambulatory surgery centers or outpatient facilities, so to speak. Being able to transition from an ambulatory surgery center or an outpatient center into a hospital should be something that, if we need it, they are already stood-up, built facilities
that can transition pretty quickly into a hospital setting. But they're going to have to have some requirements, obviously, that they're going to have to meet. And so at the state and federal level, one of those obviously is 24-hour nursing, but there's also several things in there that they have to meet those standards. And so they hired the extra help. They hired the extra staff. They kind of went through and jumped through all those different hoops to be able to do that. So what this bill does is just to make sure that if they do all that,
then they should be able to be recognized then as a temporary hospital and be paid for those services that they render to those patients under that designation. So this is in the future.
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
13:58
We're not going back and retroactively. No, this is both,
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
14:00
future and retroactive. Okay, that's what I'm trying to
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
14:03
get. Yes. Okay, all right, thank you. Representative Ferguson, you have a
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
14:11
question? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a quick question, Senator. If the insurer didn't pay the hospital,
That means at that time period, the hospital wrote the bill off or they passed it on to the patient?
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
14:28
No, I think it's uncollected at this point. It's uncollected. So
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
14:31
they didn't try to pass it on to the
patient, and so the hospital, the temporary hospital, had to write it off or something to that sort
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
14:40
of sorts. It is, I can't, I'm not a CPA or an attorney, but I'm not sure if you can write this. I can tell you if there's a debt that we collect But as a health care professional, we can no longer write that off of taxes.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. But I'm not
Chair
Unverified
15:00
a CPA. I can't really answer your question. Representative
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
15:06
Leidyman, you're very nice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, Senator Urban, I guess I'm wondering, so we're saying that we're going to require them to pay claims to individuals? Is that
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
15:18
what you're asking? No, claims to the provider.
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
15:22
So how do we know, I mean, how do we know those are valid claims or not valid claims?
I mean, we're telling the insurance company to pay these claims without knowing what the claims are.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
15:34
No, they have the claims. You do billing. No,
we don't know what they are. Oh, well, I mean, we do because it was services that were provided to the patients. We're just saying that if you're designated to be a hospital, then you should be paid as a
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
15:54
hospital. So you're saying these claims would have been paid if it was in a brick-and-mortar hospital?
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
16:01
Well, yes, and these are brick-and-mortar facilities, but it's just a designation. Okay, thank
Chair
Unverified
16:09
you. Representative Johnson, you're recognized. I'm just trying
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
16:16
to clarify, you were the drafting legislator, so your intent at the time of drafting the legislation, you feel pretty confident speaking to that? Yes. And your intent was, hey, we're in a crisis situation, our hospitals are overrun, there's a federal recognition of the need to have temporary hospital facilities, that could happen again in the future, correct?
So there is already in statute a definition of temporary facility, a contracting language already in statute that we've already all passed. Not you, but as a group, we agreed this was the right thing to do. It was unanimous. Right. And so now there's a question of clarification of what qualifies as a temporary facility, if they should actually be paid as a temporary facility. You're just trying to clarify that, correct? Correct. These are not questions of should a code be paid or not paid. It's about what, you know, around how temporary facilities are defined and contracted,
and we thought we had that language correct. Correct. And apparently there's been some discrepancy about how that should be worded, and now we're trying to clean up that wording to meet the
Representative Sonia Eubanks Barker
Unverified
17:27
original intent of the legislation. Correct. Okay. Representative Aker, you're recognized. Thank you. And Senator, wouldn't you agree that insurance companies have the infrastructure to audit and validate claims and verify that those were
Representative Aker
Unverified
17:35
rendered as they were rendered, that that's not what's in dispute here. Correct. If they're going to have that discussion that's outside whether or not they should be paid or not paid.
Chair
Unverified
17:44
Yes, sir. Okay, thank you. Any further questions from the committee? Okay. We'll have a motion at the appropriate time, not at this time, though. Thank you for your testimony. There's no one signed up, but is there anyone who would like to speak against this bill? Let's come to the table, introduce yourself for the record, and proceed with your testimony, sir.
Speaker 89
18:30
Blue Cross. So as Senator Irvin mentioned, there were about two ASCs, as
Speaker 88
18:36
we call them, ambulatory surgery centers, in the state that opted to participate in the Federal Hospitals Without Walls program. The ASCs are one-bed hospitals that don't have an emergency room, and typically they
have to discharge patients within 23 hours. The federal program entitled them to take advantage of a higher reimbursement rate for individuals paid by the federal government, which have been Medicare and Medicaid. I went back several times and watched the testimony for SB 603, which eventually became Act 723 of 2021. All the testimony that I saw seemed to justify that the bill was focused on allowing the ASEs to return to an ASE status after having become a temporary hospital.
So this was after the second wave of COVID, and there was nothing mentioned at that time in either the House or the Senate testimony with respect to payments. Blue Cross did not object to the bill at that time, and we complied with the law to allow ASCs to return immediately to their ASC status after having been designated a temporary hospital. As you know well from the past week, hospital reimbursements vary depending on their tier rating, on their size and scope of the facility, whether they're a critical access hospital or the rule and so on.
The ASCs, as I mentioned, they're one-bed facilities. And so we felt that paying them like they were, you know, a Baptist or a St. Bernard's or a Mercy was not appropriate. Instead, we offered rates that are comparable in size and scope to the facilities that they are. We later offered an enhanced rate, but that was not accepted by them. We entered into two separate mediation efforts, the second of which was court-ordered.
Both of those failed. The amount that these facilities believe that they are due keeps growing after the fact. They want this to apply to all of our policyholders, including our state contracts. I went back and looked at Act 723. I did not see anything in there that exempted EBD or our home.
So given the size of their financial demand as it exists now, we believe that the physical impact would be material. I want to point out this Act 723 did not require us to offer these facilities that don't have ERs and that are very, very small, the same contract rate schedule that we have in place for our full-service hospitals. It required us to maintain the network status of these facilities, and according to the testimony, that was the primary purpose of the bill.
Because a carrier, not us, refused to offer Freeway Surgical Center a health care contract, the Act did require carriers to have a health care contract with them, which the law specifically defined as a health care contract for the delivery of health care services to enrollees. That's the language from the bill. We have always had and always honored a health care contract with these facilities as defined in the 2021 law.
The ASCs obviously disagree with us, but they also disagree with the court that ruled against them. They are now asking for a new law to backdate their contracts to when they became temporary hospitals in 2020. Passing this bill sends a signal to anyone that thinks the law is unfair to them that they can petition the legislature to change the law ex post facto and have their contracts adjusted accordingly.
So that's the gravity of this bill. It's a question of law, and it's also a question of constitutionality. So regardless of your opinion of the law and that, you know, what was in effect then and then Act 723, it was the law of the land at the time, and Blue Cross conducted its affairs according to the law as it existed then. So in Pulaski County Circuit Court,
Judge Fox ruled that the ASCs were entitled to a hospital contract. I'll repeat that. He ruled in their favor that they are entitled to a hospital contract as a temporary hospital. But here's the essential part. Their contract can only be effective after July 28, 2021. That's what the ruling said. That's when Act 23 went into effect. And he did not grant them retroactive pay because that would have been unconstitutional.
So the legislation is clear, and Judge Fox ruled accordingly. Forcing retroactive payments is not fair, it's not legal, and it's unconstitutional. The ex post facto clause contained in Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution states that no ex post facto law shall be passed. Ex post facto is Latin for after the fact. There are also numerous other articles, clauses in the Constitution, the bills of attainder.
The Fifth Amendment for Due Process Clause also prohibits the government from depriving a person of life, liberty, pursuit without due process of law. Retrospective laws like this impermissibly create unforeseen liability for past actions that were in full compliance of the law at the time. And finally, the Declaration of Rights in the Arkansas Constitution, Article 2, Section 19, says that no bill of attainder ex post facto law or law impairing the obligations of contracts shall ever be passed.
Chair
Unverified
25:34
I'd be happy to take any questions. Sorry about
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
25:50
that. Representative Wooten, I believe you were first in the queue with a question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The time facility you described and the time facility that Senator Irwin described her to, she said it was outpatient. You said it was a 23-hour hospitalization, I guess like the Cabot facility.
Speaker 89
26:13
You know, so, you know, outpatient, you know, you can stay. You just can't stay 24 hours, and that
Speaker 88
26:20
would be, I would think, similar to this, where you don't have an emergency room. Cabot does not have an emergency room. And it's a short stay. And
Speaker 89
26:31
I think a difference between maybe Cabot and this would just be a size. Well,
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
26:38
Cabot has an emergency room. Oh, okay. And this outpatient doesn't.
Okay. Correct. Is that right? Okay. Follow-up, is the litigation over, or is it still in progress? I couldn't understand. You said it was effective July 28th based on a ruling by Judge Fox. Correct. Is it still in progress, the litigation, or is the litigation completed?
Speaker 101
27:11
The litigation is complete now.
And it goes effective July 28th. Correct. And there were appeals to the state Supreme Court, and that
Speaker 89
27:21
was finalized in February of this year. Okay. All right. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Aves, you're recognized. Where are these facilities located? I think
Representative Les D. Eaves
Unverified
27:30
Senator Irvin said there were one or two. Well, you have ambulatory
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
27:36
surgery centers all around the state of Arkansas, and they do have more than one bed. I'm not
sure where that comes from, but the facilities I've personally seen have more than one.
Representative Les D. Eaves
Unverified
27:51
But earlier I was asking about how many of these temporary facilities are affected. I think there were two. Usually there were one or two. Two. And
do you know where they're located? I think Jonesboro and Little Rock. Okay. How much is owed? I don't have that figure. And another question, he mentioned that
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
28:14
the amount that is owed keeps growing. Why does it keep growing? I can't speak to that. I was not part of those conversations, and we've never had this conversation before.
Do you know how much it's owed? In the Senate committee, there was nothing. Nobody spoke against the bill in the Senate committee, so this is new information for me. I
Speaker 111
28:32
did not speak in the Senate committee because the bill had
Speaker 88
28:36
come up amongst a bunch of other things, and I hadn't had time to research it at that point. I don't have time to meet with y'all outside the committee.
Representative Les D. Eaves
Unverified
28:49
David, you said it keeps growing. Why does it keep growing?
Speaker 88
28:54
I don't know. I just know through the legal process, the number increased. Do you know how much is owed? Or assuming it's owed? I believe one of the numbers that I heard was in the tens of... It was over $10 million, between $10 and $20 million. Just from these two facilities? Correct. And, yeah.
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
29:25
Representative Ferguson, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Coyne, Chair. Quick question. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I thought I heard you say that during this process, Blue Cross agreed to pay a certain rate to the temporary hospitals. However, you guys didn't think the rate they should receive should be the same as a St. Bernard or some other hospital.
Did I hear that correctly? Yes. And so there was a disagreement. it, the rate that you guys offered was much lower than the rate that you would normally pay St. Bernard or St. Vincent
Speaker 120
30:18
or maybe UAMS, right? It was lower, yes.
Speaker 89
30:21
But it wouldn't be the same rate you would pay St. Bernard or St. Vincent or Baptist? And all three of those have different rates.
Representative Sonia Eubanks Barker
Unverified
30:29
Okay. All right. Thank you. Representative Aker, you're next in the queue. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, David. You did spend some time outlining the differences between the larger hospitals, but, I
Representative Aker
Unverified
30:44
mean, would it be fair to say that these ambulatory systems did have their own challenges as far as staffing, recruiting, setting up, facilitating? They don't have the marketing capacity. They don't have the brand name. They don't have the funnel of patients. They don't have the extra facilities,
and yet they still rendered the same level of care as a facility that has all those advantages?
Speaker 89
31:06
It wouldn't have been the same level of care because they don't have the same facilities, but
Representative Aker
Unverified
31:10
they did. But a claim administered is a CPT code and a CPT code that you can audit. Can you give an example of how someone received sub-adequate care at one of these facilities that they would have received better care at
Speaker 89
31:23
Baptist? So, you know, they don't have all the, they haven't invested in all the equipment that are larger.
Speaker 93
31:30
That's why the larger hospitals get more than the
Representative Aker
Unverified
31:32
smaller hospitals. But they're filling in a specific need by being ambulatory and nimble and have their own challenges. I'm asking, do you have patients, examples of patients who receive subadequate care for the same service that was rendered? We never suggested that they
Speaker 89
31:44
offered subadequate care. And we did also offer them. I believe so on the rates is where you're offering that they're offering subadequate care. And we did offer them an enhanced rate over what they would have received otherwise.
Representative Sonia Eubanks Barker
Unverified
31:57
- Okay, again, I think the service rendered was rendered,
and if there's a rate for that and you don't have any
Representative Aker
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32:05
documentation that the patient suffered and somehow or received sub-adequate care, then it
Representative Sonia Eubanks Barker
Unverified
32:11
would seem that they should be compensated accordingly. Also, again, follow-up, Mr. Chair, the implement, the effective date also seems a little arbitrary or disingenuous because there
Representative Aker
Unverified
32:22
was no way to pass a law. I mean, they made those, they cared for those patients in good faith leading up to whatever that signing date is.
So, I mean, to use the court as some sort of shield to block off a quarter of claims that were rendered, I do take issue with, because I agree that you might have the constitutional argument to do so, but I think it is not operating in good faith if real care was rendered to your members and is still going on uncompensated and then we're just sticking a date in July as when we actually start caring
Speaker 88
32:59
for those patients financially. So we offered them an initial payment,
Speaker 89
33:01
and then we offered them an enhanced payment,
and then we also, through the court process, offered additional on top of that. Yes, I
Representative Sonia Eubanks Barker
Unverified
33:10
understand that. Final follow-up. I guess my question is, we're taking different people's word on the fact that Baptist has four
Representative Aker
Unverified
33:18
walls and has a, you know, world-class heart surgeon, but that may be completely irrelevant to the same claims that were rendered at these locations. And so it seems that if the claim was rendered, the claim should be paid. And I think that, like I said, I'll be in favor of this bill for those reasons.
Chair
Unverified
33:37
And we have offered payment. Representative Richardson, you're recognized. Thank you. So I just want to go back,
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
33:51
I guess, to Representative Eads was asking a question. So you made the statement about where the costs were and how they keep going up, but you don't know what they are. Is
Speaker 89
34:02
that an accurate statement? So we know what we've – and I would have to go back and see what we have offered.
Speaker 88
34:13
We have actually, I just got confirmation from our team, we actually have paid them. We just, there's a dispute in the amount. When did you pay them? We would have paid them back then when the contracts were entered. Okay, and me not having
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
34:32
any health care background, I kind of lean on everyone else, but I know that there's a certain way in which you guys pay for services rendered, But when we look at some of these pop-up or these emergency hospitals that are providing services to our constituents,
I find it frustrating that, you know, they're providing a service and then they've got a scratching claw to get paid for what they've done. And I don't think it's any less than what would happen at a Baptist hospital than one of these pop-up hospitals. I just don't understand that. And I guess I never will because I'm not in the insurance field. But I do know that they have done a job, and I expect for them to be paid at the rate in which they feel is necessary. I'm absolutely in support of the bill, so thank you for bringing it, Senator.
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
35:23
Representative Johnson. Just to clarify, I recognize that you paid them a sum, and then you offered them an enhanced sum, and then on top of that offered them more money. But even with those offerings, it didn't match the same reimbursement rate they would have gotten in a traditional hospital, or we wouldn't be having this conversation, is that
Speaker 89
35:44
correct? Well, like I said, you know, each hospital, depending on their class, obviously, you know, they
Speaker 88
35:50
get different rates, but they felt like it should have been more.
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
35:54
They being the hospitals felt like? They being the, yeah, the ambulatory. Well, but at the time they were hospitals, temporary hospitals, right? At the time of care, they weren't ambulatory surgery centers, they were temporary hospitals. Correct. Okay. Any
Chair
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36:10
further questions from the committee? Okay, seeing none, thank you for your testimony. Is there anyone else who would
like to speak for this bill? Is there anyone else in the audience who would like to speak against this bill?
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
36:27
Okay. Seeing no one, Representative Urban, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, members of the committee, for the questions. I think what I take issue with is the comments that, well, it's not appropriate or we didn't feel like it was appropriate to pay them. Well, the law said they were a temporary hospital. It doesn't matter what your opinion is, whether it was an appropriate hospital, temporary hospital or not, because it didn't have an ER.
Of course a temporary hospital is not going to have an ER because they are the ER. They are trying to fill a need at the time where we need them. And I think it's really, really important to close for the bill that we recognize that we are going to be in a situation. I hope we never are in a situation like we were in, but we were in a situation and we need to be able to have policy on the books of the state of Arkansas that are very clear that says you will recognize them as a temporary hospital, no matter what your opinion is or
what you think is an appropriate or not appropriate, but that when you deal with them and you contract with them, you need to follow the law and treat them as a hospital during that time and that designation. So with that, I'm closed. Thank you for
Speaker 13
37:47
your presentation. Senator Irvin has closed for the bill. Reverend Baker, you're recognized.
Chair
Unverified
37:52
What is your motion, sir? Motion do pass. We have a motion do pass by Representative Baker.
All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say no. No. Congratulations. You have passed your bill. Thank you, members of the committee. Members, we're going to try to jump around to try to proceed with the ones that are going to be as quick as possible. Representative Brown has a concurrence in a Senate amendment. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Matt Brown, District 55.
Speaker 137
38:34
Members had a concurrence on our UCC amendment bill that we did earlier. The Senate caught a drafting error specifically. We passed Senate Bill 133 earlier in the session, which clarified that a crypto digital currency is not legal money. With the UCC amendments we did a few weeks ago, we may have actually undone that definition, so this just simply syncs up the definition of that bill to the definition of 133, so there's no issue. It makes it very clear that crypto is not legal tender. Just a clarification from the chair.
Chair
Unverified
39:06
What bill number is this? I apologize. This is the first one on the agenda. This is HB 1746, Concurrence and Senate Amendment. Thank you. Any questions for Representative Brown? We'll have a motion at the appropriate time. Is there anyone who would like to speak against this concurrence? Anyone else speak for it? You're recognized to close, Representative Brown. I'm close. Appreciate a good vote. Representative Dalby, as you're recognized for a motion to concur in the Senate Amendment,
all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say no. Congratulations, you've passed your concurrence.
Is Senator Tucker? Members, this is SB 583. Just introduce yourselves for the record, and you may proceed with the testimony.
State Representative Jeremiah Moore, House District 61. Clark Tucker, State
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
40:18
Senator, District 14. I'm going to defer to my esteemed House colleague. Esteemed. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Kendra Moore
Unverified
40:26
Thank you, members of the committee. Senate Bill 583. It's a pretty straightforward bill that was passed 35 to 0 in the Senate. It has to do with the private right of action for pharmacies to collect damages through the courts. The main point is that currently pharmacists have no way of pursuing recovery for their own losses when PBMs break
the law. The insurance department can fine the PBM, and that's great. They're doing a good job with that and I support that. But the fines collected go into the state treasury while they don't compensate the pharmacy for the pharmacy's loss as a whole, meaning time, effort, etc. And the pharmacies need to be able to recover for their own losses suffered as a result of PBMs breaking the law that we passed seven years ago. If that will take any questions. Thank you, Representative. Questions from the committee?
Chair
Unverified
41:19
Okay. Seeing none. Does anyone in the audience like to speak against this bill? Do you have anyone else to
speak for this bill? Okay. Would you like to close for your bill, Representative? I'm close for my bill, and I would appreciate a good vote. Representative Moore is close for his bill. Representative
Chair
Unverified
41:35
Ladyman, do you recognize for a motion? Motion do pass. If a motion do pass, but Representative Ladyman, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say no. Congratulations, you have passed your bill. Thank you, Representative.
Representative McClendon, I believe you're here on SB 596 on Senator
Chair
Unverified
41:58
McKee. You all may go to the end of the table. Introduce yourselves just for the record and proceed with your presentation.
Speaker 59
42:14
Representative Mindy McClendon, House District 10.
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
42:18
State Senator Matt McKee, District 6. Members, in the
Representative Mindy McAlindon
Unverified
42:25
sense of brevity, this bill is a simple bill that basically just sets state policy with respect to energy production.
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
42:33
And I think it's time that as a state we did that. I think it's time that we stop letting federal courts set our policy. And this is an attempt to do just that. I'd be happy to answer the multitude of questions I know that
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
42:57
will exist. Any questions from committee? Representative Rooten, you recognize? Thank you. Senator, you and I have discussed this at length, and I still have the question relative to the two coal-fired plants
that we have being under a consent order that was entered by the federal court or made by the federal court upon energy that they had to close one of them within eight years and then one of them within ten. Does your bill require or ask them to not abide by that ruling and keep those two plants open? And let me qualify that by saying that we passed Senate Bill 307,
which established procedures by the Public Service Commission and actions by utilities and that type thing to be able to supply adequate energy to the state. Are you taking this into consideration that they are under a federal order to do that? Representative Wooten,
I appreciate the question. I think it's a very important question. I think that this bill works very well with SB 307.
Obviously, our goal is to provide reliable, affordable power to the people of Arkansas. So with the consent decree, that
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
44:22
is a decision that was made under a different regulatory framework with a different federal administration. And all that is necessary if this bill passes is for the utilities to demonstrate to the Public Service Commission that the early retirement of those two plants is in the public interest with respect to rates and reliability. So I think that they should have no problem doing that, if that's the case.
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
44:51
Well, I understand that point. We all want affordable rates, and that facilitation by our utility companies, not just energy, but Summit and all the rest of them. But we can't just, even though there's been a change in the administration, we can't just forego a federal court ruling, can we? Well, we
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
45:19
got in the position we are in the United States
and in Arkansas with respect to energy production because of litigation and federal court rulings. And I think it's time that the state of Arkansas, the legislature here, sets forth our policy with respect to those two items. And if that leads to litigation, well, sometimes that's how we make these decisions and come to a conclusion on those issues. But as we know, court decisions are not always final. And so sometimes those things have to be revisited. I don't know if that will occur in this instance. I think the utilities have been telling us for a long time that this is the best thing for the people of Arkansas.
And so if that's the case, they should be able to make that case and close the plants,
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
46:03
if that's the best thing for the ratepayers and their liability. But we still have the point that it's a federal court order that we do this. I mean, the only way, at least in my experience, the only way for us to change that is for the federal court to make another ruling or say that they were wrong, which I'm not familiar.
And it's unfortunate that the federal court, the judges maybe have been appointed by another administration, and that administration disagrees with the way we feel politically. But the point being, the court has ruled, so it's the law of the land that we have to abide by, and that's what we have to do. And this is going to lead to more litigation, which will not cost them in rate increases,
But it will give maybe lower energy costs, but if we end up in a bunch of lawsuits, it's going to cost the taxpayers of this state. Is that a correct assumption? I
think the question is, is energy
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
47:14
policy in Arkansas going to be set by the state legislature, or is it going to be set by
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
47:20
federal courts and activists? In conjunction, I didn't mean to interrupt you. I agree with you, but
we didn't do it. So now we're paying the price to the federal court.
Is that not a fact that we have to, they have to, or we have to file another lawsuit and spend a bunch more money in order to overcome? And all that time, this law moves forward. So I think we would all recognize that federal
court rulings are the law until they're not. Okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would add on that, I don't know how many of you have seen,
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
48:04
but the Trump administration has issued some executive orders aimed at keeping dispatchable, reliable power online. And the question is, retiring these assets early, is that good for the ratepayers or is it not? So I think those are discussions that need to occur at the PSC and perhaps in the courts, and I think that's a discussion that needs to be had. Representative
Chair
Unverified
48:27
Eves, you're recognized for your question.
I don't believe there's any other questions
Representative Les D. Eaves
Unverified
48:40
in the queue. Senator McKee, first I want to thank you for all the work you've done on previous legislation to make sure we have plenty of reliable and cheap power. Some of the testimony we heard on a previous bill talked about what it would cost to upgrade the current coal
plants that are due to be retired, to upgrade the scrubbers on those.
And the numbers I heard were a billion apiece. Is that still the case, and did the president's executive order
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
49:15
on April 8th change any of that? So I'm not familiar with all of the prices, and I think that that's an important thing for the Public Service Commission to vet. I do know that the executive orders made available different loan programs and grant programs
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
49:29
in order to facilitate the updating of those plants, whether it be with respect to environmental needs that they have or other needs.
Representative Les D. Eaves
Unverified
49:37
I'm still struggling with this bill. I'm kind of with you on some of it, and I'm not on some of it. One of the reasons is Representative McElhinney said I don't push the red no button enough, so that's a part of my thinking. So some of the testimony was the scrubbers would be a billion a plant, and then in the same breath it was going to be a billion or a billion and a half to build a whole new plant that would be natural gas. So I just guess I want to get your thoughts on if it does cost a billion to update the scrubbers, would it not be better off to spend that billion on a new plant that runs on natural gas?
And again, for the record, not opposed to coal at all. I'm just thinking through the numbers here. So
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
50:16
I think that that's a very good question, And I'm not married to any one single source of electric generation. I'm not married to coal. I'm not married to gas or any of the other forms. One of the things that we should consider is there are 133 new gas plants being built in the United States over the next several years. And if we think that that's not going to do something to the price of natural gas and the supply chain with respect to the items that needed to build those plants, I think we're just mistaken.
And so whether or not this leads to keeping the coal plants open or closing them down and building gas plants, if that's what's in the best interest of ratepayers, I just think those are conversations that need to occur at the Public Service Commission so we can get good numbers and have those conversations. All right. Any other questions
Chair
Unverified
51:05
from the committee? Representative McGrew, you're recognized for your question.
Representative Richard McGrew
Unverified
51:13
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, and he may have kind of already answered my question, but this back and forth the federal government between the past administration and the current administration and the executive orders that went out, I sure can't keep up with it, and I'm not sure what's right or what's not. So do you have a take on that? Does this executive order change that? Also, this is in the best interest for our Kansas to make sure that we have the power that we need.
We don't really care. Does this bill care whether we keep the coal plant open as long as we replace the energy? It's purely looking at we want
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
51:56
to have enough energy for our Kansas, correct? That's correct. I'm not exactly sure how all the executive
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
52:01
orders will affect previous federal court rulings or consent decrees, but I think it's a conversation that we need to have nationally, right? It's not just about Arkansas, but Arkansas is in one of the areas of the country that has a lot of early planned retirements.
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
52:18
What was your second question? My second question was just that we didn't... Oh, yeah, this bill doesn't set forth whether or not it's coal, natural gas, nuclear, as long as it's dispatchable, as long as it's there when the customers need it. And I
Representative Richard McGrew
Unverified
52:32
think all this discussion we've been having about energy and all the economic development that's going to come to Arkansas if we have the property energy. I think it's very important that we
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
52:43
protect that energy, and that's what this bill does, correct? I think it does, and I've said this in the Senate committee.
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
52:49
I don't ever judge people in the past for the decisions they made at the time based on the available options, right? But I think we find ourselves in a different regulatory framework and a different energy needs space, and so we have different needs. Nobody could have foreseen the needs that we have now five years ago, right? So these are important conversations to have right now. Thank you. All right. Any other
Chair
Unverified
53:13
questions from the committee? Seeing none, we have several people here to speak on this bill.
John Bethel, if you would, please come to the end of the table. Introduce yourself. And you
may proceed with your testimony. Also, your guests, if they would, please identify themselves
Speaker 170
53:43
as well. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. I'm John Bethel. I'm the Director of Public Affairs for Intergy Arkansas, and with the committee's indulgence, the three of us will appear as a group.
Speaker 171
53:55
I'm Kirk Castleberry. I work for Intergy Arkansas in resource
Justin Allen
Unverified
54:00
planning. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and committee. My name is Justin Allen. I'm
Speaker 169
54:07
an attorney here in Little Rock speaking today on behalf of Intergy. Good morning, committee. We oppose Senate Bill 596. It inserts risks
Speaker 170
54:16
into the resource planning process and, therefore, does not improve reliability. It will lead to lengthy, expensive litigation with a very low probability of success.
It will require millions in legal fees and potentially billions in capital investments that could otherwise be spent in more beneficial ways for our customers and those of our co-owners. The uncertainty the bill creates will jeopardize the state's economic development efforts. It is contrary to the goals set forth in Senate Bill 307 that was recently passed to ensure that the state has adequate, dispatchable, reliable, and affordable power to generate Arkansas jobs. We stand ready to engage in the conversation regarding the state's energy needs
and possible additional steps to strengthen generation and transmission system in Arkansas to ensure adequate, dispatchable, reliable, and affordable energy throughout Arkansas. The better opportunity to have this conversation in a constructive and meaningful way would be in the insurance and commerce meetings during the interim. And I wanted to point out that we do share and support Senator McKee and Representative McElindon's desire to make sure that we have adequate resources is to serve our customers, because that's what we do.
We've been doing it for over 100 years and intend to continue doing that. And we agree that those are important topics that need discussion and agreement among state policymakers. An amendment to this bill would resolve our concern. At page 8, line 13, insert a new paragraph F that would read, this subchapter does not apply to the retirement or repowering of any dispatchable electric generation facility under settlement, consent decree, or other resolution of any litigation or legal proceeding executed or ordered before the effective date of this act.
And now Mr. Allen will address the legal issues presented by the bill, and Mr. Castleberry will address the resource planning issues created by the bill.
Justin Allen
Unverified
56:18
Representative Wooten touched on this, kind of the legal, practical implications of this bill. And I'm not the policy expert by any means, but I think, as Mr. Bethel has noted, a lot of the language on the first four or so pages of this bill are probably correct. I think most people in this room would agree with some of the policy goals to be nimble and flexible and have access to dispatchable energy.
I think everyone agrees with that. The problem comes in on the bottom of page 5, starting on line 31. That language requires, before you retire a dispatchable electric generation facility, that the operator go to the Public Service Commission, check multiple boxes of criteria, and get approval from the Public Service Commission. And there is no exception here for the three Intergy facilities that are already scheduled to be closed pursuant to the federal court decree that has been discussed.
It all began with litigation against Intergy, alleging violations of federal environmental law in the operation of these three facilities. Entergy made the decision to resolve that in lieu of putting scrubbers on the plant to the tune of several billion dollars. And these gentlemen can speak to that better than I can. And it was resolved in the form of a consent decree, which was signed off on by the Department of Justice under the first Trump administration. So that is in place. And I can't sit here and guarantee, ladies and gentlemen, what a court will do in any particular case.
But I think it's a safe bet that ultimately, after litigation in one form or another, that federal preemption, the Supremacy Clause would control, and this bill would not be applicable to these three facilities. But I can't guarantee that. I don't know where that's going to play out. I don't know how long that's going to take. I don't know how much money that's going to cost. And I don't know what that's going to do to the state of electrical generation in Arkansas in the meantime. I see three options for intergy if this word would come law.
First one is to ignore it, not apply to the Public Service Commission and seek approval of the closure of these facilities. Well, what's the risk associated with that? Well, show causal order is entered. Entry is drug into the Public Service Commission. It could be fine. It could lose its license to operate. And it could be disallowed recovery for the cost of decommissioning these units. Senate Bill 596 were to become law. It's also likely that the other interest to the lawsuit would file another lawsuit or a complaint with the PSC. Again, this is one option that would
likely result in protracted litigation and uncertainty. A second option is to make application with the Public Service Commission. Well, we know what will happen immediately at that point. The other parties to the federal litigation will allege a violation of the consent decree. We will go back to federal court, ultimately, probably lose, Intergy would lose because of federal preemption, but again, we don't know how long that'll take and what that'll do to the state of our electrical generation policy in Arkansas. A third option is to go back to the federal court,
federal district court here in Little Rock, and petition to modify, to allow for this application to the Public Service Commission. We know that the other parties to the consent decree will vigorously oppose. The court almost certainly will deny it. But again, how long will that take? What kind of money will that cost? And what will that do to the state of electrical generation in Arkansas? And one final point on the third option, even if we were to succeed in getting an amendment to the consent decree to comply with Senate Bill 596, the requirements of that
consent decree are now set forth in Entergy's Title V clean air permits for these facilities. And any deviation from that is a legal violation subject to over $100,000 penalty per day, per plant. And also the White Bluff deadline is in Arkansas's Regional Hays State Implementation Plan, which is set forth in the Federal Register. That, too, can be enforced by federal regulators. So there may be some other options, but to me those seem to be the three most obvious ones,
and none of them are good for Intergy, for the ratepayers, or for the state. And that's why we oppose this bill and why the amendment Mr. Bethel referenced would
Speaker 175
1:00:43
address these concerns. I'd like to provide a few comments just from a resource planning perspective. You've heard Mr. Bethel and Justin talk about this word called uncertainty. And I can tell you from a planning perspective, the certainty provided by the consent decree is very important for us to replace this generation capacity
that we need. And it's really simple. It's about the certainty of when and what. Right now we know when we've got to do that. For the White Bluff Station, it's the end of 2028. For the independent station, it's the end of 2030. And the what provides us the time to figure out what all we need to do to replace that. And I might say that we use this term retirement a lot in the conversation here, the consent disagree does not require us to retire those plants. It requires us
to cease to use coal in those plants, and that's different. And part of the what is looking at the prospect of repowering those plants, burning natural gas or some other fuel, as well as all the other technologies that are before us that we get to look at when we replace those facilities. So this certainty is just extremely important to get us there. If we're saddled with litigation that takes away that certainty, that's a problem.
Because as a planner, I don't have, I don't know when, I don't know what. Am I going to have to continue to look at burning coal and investing? We talked about a billion dollars at each site for environmental controls. And that was a billion dollars back in 2018. It's probably more than that now. Right now, that's not on our radar because that's certainty. If that uncertainty is gone, that goes back on our radar. And then about the timing. We have this litigation that's not only going to be costly, but it's going to take a long time to resolve, most likely.
So I don't know the timing there. And then, as Justin mentioned, the 28 and 2030 dates are in the Title V permits, as well as the state's regional HACE plan. So those are completely different than the consent degree. So there's all these kind of complexities that are introduced from a planner's perspective that I don't have right now. And then, when you just look at the practical aspects of this, as we speak, there's a Herculean effort underway to get to where we need to get to as a state to provide all the energy we need for our customers and to attract the economic growth that we all desire.
We passed this Generating Arkansas Acts law that is meant to provide us opportunities that we've never had before to attract these industries. And this legislation we're talking about now is entirely inconsistent with that. So we've got a lot of work to do, and this herculean effort is hard to turn on a dime. It's kind of like turning an aircraft carrier. You don't do that all at once, and you sure don't do that without cost. And then, if you look at the coal plants themselves, they're 50-year-old technology plants.
So, if you look at how they've been operating for the last 10 years, today they're running about half as much as they did in 2015. Because they're 50-year-old plants and there are lower-cost technologies out there, and that's showing up in how they're running. So, I don't have a crystal ball. I couldn't tell you what they're going to operate at this year or whatever, but I can tell you they're not operating as much. So all that to say is we have certainty right now. We won't have certainty if there are lawsuits filed. And at the end of the day, this is all about keeping rates low for our customers,
keeping us competitive so we can track economic development projects. And I think this bill hampers that for sure. So happy to take questions if there are any. All right. Thank you for your
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
1:04:43
testimony. Is there any questions from the committee? Representative Ferguson, I
Chair
Unverified
1:04:50
recognize for your question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
1:04:55
me bring this home a little bit to the lawyer at the end of the table.
Looking at the bill on page 6, line 17-25, there's a section there, and it indicates, it says, The commission shall not approve the retirement of
a dispatchable electric generation facility, authorized a surcharge for the decommission of the dispatchable electric generation facility. I take that to mean that the commission shall not approve
Speaker 118
1:05:38
any provider from, I guess, closing a plant. I take that's what
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
1:05:49
it means. But then down further in that paragraph, it also indicates that the commission could issue an acceptance to that if they find that it was in the public interest of the public to have that facility decommissioned.
I ask that question because, of course, in Jefferson County, we have a coal plant at White Bluffet between Redfield and Whitehall. It would be a benefit not only to Jefferson County but to southeast Arkansas. And I'm wondering how this piece of legislation would affect that plant. So first of all,
Justin Allen
Unverified
1:06:37
that plant is one of the three that we're talking about that has been subject to closure pursuant to the federal consent decree.
So currently pursuant to the federal consent decree before 2031, that facility has to stop burning coal. And so that's one of our points here is that that has been decided and is subject to a federal consent decree, which, again, the Department of Justice under the first Trump administration approved. And so what we're saying is because of that, by requiring Intergy to now have to go to the Public Service Commission and looking at the language representative you're talking about and overcome a rebuttable presumption
that generally it's in the public interest to close it, they're not only not going to approve it, but they're not going to let them recover any costs to close it. That's what that language you
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
1:07:28
just referenced is doing. And that was my second question. So my third question and final question, Mr. Chair, you've answered my second question. Isn't that going to add to
Speaker 120
1:07:41
the cost of whenever you have to rebuild another facility? Yes. Yes.
Speaker 175
1:07:49
Like I mentioned before, the uncertainty there definitely adds to the cost. We've got to look at things that we don't know are going to happen, like keeping the coal plant open and investing that billion dollars in those scrubbers that I mentioned a minute ago. We've got big plans for White Bluff. White Bluff is a very valuable site. And I mentioned that we're working very hard on those plans. And those plans will go before the Arkansas Public Service Commission. But that site is huge, 3,600 acres.
It has, you know, 1,600-plus megawatts of generation on it. It has 1,600 megawatts of generation interconnect there. That's the ability to connect whatever we replace it with to the power grid. And that means since it has that interconnect there, customers get to use that for zero, zero cost. So that's a huge benefit to our customers. If we have to do something else, we may have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars
just to interconnect to the bulk power system, the big transmission lines. So, yeah, if we don't have the certainty, it does increase the cost. White Bluff is going to be a big part of Entergy Arkansas's plans going forward. We spell that out in our IRP. There will be dispatchable generation there. There will be other technologies there. It's
Speaker 171
1:09:15
a huge benefit for economic development. So we need the certainty, and we want to avoid
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
1:09:20
those increased costs. One last question, Mr. Chair.
So you said something about if you have to do some other things. Would that be maybe not building or refurbishing some of the plants if you have to close those? If we have to
Speaker 175
1:09:39
close it, back up a little bit, it's ceased to use coal. We're not necessarily retiring it. One of the things on the table is looking at burning natural gas, and our state has a lot of that. And so that's one of the things. Whether we do that, I don't know.
If we do something else, it will be because it has superior economics, but it will be
Chair
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1:09:59
there at that site. Oh, okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Carol Dalby
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1:10:07
Representative Dahl will be recognized for your question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Bethel, that amendment that you offered in your testimony a few moments ago, was that offered to the sponsors of this bill? And if so, what was the response? And
Speaker 170
1:10:21
if not, why not? Yes, we did offer that to Senator McKee early on,
and he said that was inconsistent with the objective of the bill, I believe. Your turn. Yes, ma'am. Any other questions
Chair
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1:10:35
from the committee? Seeing none, Representative McGrew, you're recognized for your question.
Representative Richard McGrew
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1:10:42
Yeah, I guess I'm a little, need some clarification. On the planning of moving forward to building the other plant down there to hook on before there, why can y'all not continue on with that? And if you continue on with that, which replaces a fire,
why wouldn't the Public Service Commission approve that and move forward? It seems like you kind of want to take the Public Service Commission out should they
Speaker 170
1:11:04
not still be left involved with this. And we would expect the Public Service Commission to be involved. The risk, and Kurt can help with this, is if we're required to continue burning coal at those units, it costs money to do that, and that may take the money away from being able to invest in the next level of generation, which would cause rates to go up for our customers even more if we're doing both
and you're investing in an older facility with an uncertain future, Whereas under our current plans, we would be investing in new facilities with a much more certain future and a lower cost to our customers. Yeah, and, you know, if you
Speaker 175
1:11:40
have to do dual plans because you don't know where you're going to end up, what you're going to end up with is making financial commitments like with Mitsubishi and others for very expensive pieces of equipment that you may not need. And then that's going to be a cost to you if you don't go down that road. That's kind of one practical down the road.
Representative Richard McGrew
Unverified
1:11:58
Yeah, I wouldn't say in dual plans. and why can't you go on with your plan to build the gas plant of what you're going to do beside there
Speaker 170
1:12:07
and get it online so you won't have to do this? And I think we could do that, but as Mr. Allen said, if we go before the Public Service Commission with a proposal to either attempt to close the coal plant or an attempt to extend the coal plant, that's going to trigger litigation that will be expensive and potentially lengthy, and he can speak to that in greater detail than I.
But that's the risk of moving forward under the provisions of the bill is that you will likely prompt that expensive lengthy litigation. All right. Representative Tosh, you're
Chair
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1:12:40
recognized for your question. Thank you, Mr.
Representative Dwight Tosh
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1:12:43
Chair. I've heard a lot of talk this morning about the cost and the expense. But what I hadn't heard is about what's going to happen to the people that work. For an example, the new art plant, the one there in Independence County, I'm close to that area, know a lot of those people,
and there's not been any mention of what the future is for them. And I'm just curious, would this bill in some way help protect their jobs? Would you speak to that and what your
Speaker 175
1:13:15
plans are? Yeah, I mean, not only in Independence but at White Bluff, there are people that work there, and we're very concerned about that. They're our employees, and they've been involved with us as we plan the future after 2028 for White Bluff and after 2030 for independence on those cease-to-use coal dates.
At both plants, both sites, there will be replacement generation there, and hopefully some of those folks will end up operating those new technologies that are there or, like I said a minute ago, perhaps the repowering of either of those facilities. And our effort or our objective is to make sure those folks have opportunities with the new arrangement that's at White Bluff and at Independence. So your
Representative Dwight Tosh
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1:14:05
plans for Newark, you elaborated quite extensively a while ago concerning what the future holds for White Bluff.
But I noticed you didn't mention the one at Newark. So are the plans the same for them or are they
Speaker 175
1:14:19
going to be left behind? Yeah, it is. It wasn't on purpose. I can tell you independence is equally as important as White Bluff. I will also tell you, as you well know probably, that Intergy Arkansas does not own 100% of either of those sites. It has co-owners in those sites, and we have been working hand-in-glove with the co-owners. They have their planning as well,
and I suspect that they would echo a lot of the things, I hope they would, a lot of the things that I said this morning. They have their plans. They're different than ours because they have different needs for their customers. But, you know, they're going to be involved at that independent site as well as the White Bluff site as we figure out how we're going to transition out of that and execute our respective plans. Okay, thank you. Representative Lundstrom, you recognize your question.
Representative Robin Lundstrum
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1:15:14
Mine's more, I'm trying to wrap my head around this.
Do you all receive any federal funding for closing
a plant? Uh, no, no, ma'am. Okay, and there's no incentives coming to operate a federal, or operate a coal plant? Are there
Speaker 200
1:15:33
any incentives to keep one open? Not to my
Representative Robin Lundstrum
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1:15:36
knowledge, no. I'm not aware of any, I'm not aware
Speaker 175
1:15:40
of any. Okay, and then what does repowering a plant mean? It means using the existing facilities that are there, the turbine, the boiler, and all
the other facilities, just burning a different fuel. Right now, it burns coal. We may want to repower it by not burning coal, but burning natural gas. Or, you know, some coal plants have been converted to burn, you know, other things like garbage or wood chips or something like that. Okay. All right. Thank you. Representative,
Speaker 171
1:16:05
I may be recognized for your question. Thank you, Mr.
Chair
Unverified
1:16:13
Chairman. Yeah, the plant there that you just talked about,
Representative Jack Ladyman
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1:16:21
I think City War and Light has about 18% of that plant at Newark, I believe. Yeah, they do. It would affect the power supply there in Jonesboro. But I don't know. Y'all have talked about this, but I just want to try to clarify it. So, you know, Senator McKee and Representative Mack Linden has worked on this for years. I was actually a co-sponsor last session. We didn't run the bill. I think it's a great idea.
But over the two-year period, a lot of things have changed, and a lot of things have changed recently with the new executive order that President Trump just put out about coal. So my question is, these plants, and you talked about this a little bit, So they're getting close to their end of life, so those plants have been there, what, 30 years? Is that
Speaker 175
1:17:19
right? No, White Bluff came online in 1980 and Independence in 83, so closer to 50.
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:17:26
Okay. So in your opinion, what's the normal life of a coal
Speaker 175
1:17:31
plant? Well, you know, that's a question that the answer is, well, it depends on how you take care of it. But I think they're normally slated for like 60 years. But, you know, it's kind of like your old 20-year-old car. It may run well and all that, but it doesn't get very good gas mileage because it doesn't have the latest and greatest technology on it. And that's what we see here as
Speaker 171
1:17:55
well. There are much more efficient resources out there that perhaps may lower rates better
and be a better investment for customers than the
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:18:01
coal plants. So as a company, you could make the decision that you want to close that plant just because it's inefficient, it's old, it needs to be replaced, Because of the efficiency, if no other reason, the maintenance and so forth, rather than a court order, you could be closing it
Speaker 175
1:18:19
for that reason. We always look at, in our planning, what's the best thing for our customers? And so, yes, the answer to your question is yes. But the burden proof is on us to demonstrate to the Arkansas Public Service Commission that the investments we want to make to shut down a plan or to add another one
Speaker 171
1:18:35
provide benefits to customers in the public interest.
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:18:37
So if you shut down that plant, let's
just say Newark or the other one, and as you said, you could use the infrastructure that's already there, the high yard, the lines going out. Actually, you could still use the steam generator if it's still operational and in good shape. So anything downstream from the actual fuel burner could be used, right? Yeah, it could. So in that case, you would put a fuel supply on there, and that could be clean coal, couldn't it?
I mean, it's possible. I'm not putting words in your mouth here, but it could be natural gas. It could be clean
Speaker 208
1:19:19
coal. It could be something else. It could be. It could be another fuel, yeah.
Speaker 170
1:19:25
And Representative Ladyman, one of the benefits of the terms of the consent decree that really works to the benefit of our customers is we were able to operate those plants for eight and ten years beyond that point of the agreement without making those expensive capital investments at that time. So we've been able to operate those at a lower cost to our customers
for the last ten years, which has been a real benefit to our customers. And that was one of the provisions, because otherwise we would have had to have brought them into compliance with the federal regulations sooner. And so that's been a
Representative Jack Ladyman
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1:20:00
real benefit for our customers. Big benefit. And I may be repeating a question if I am. I apologize. But in your opinion, how does President Trump's executive order affect what you're
doing in this situation in replacing plants?
Speaker 175
1:20:15
Does it affect it? How does it affect it? Well, I'll give you my opinion. I'm not a lawyer. I'm a planner. I don't think it affects it at all because I don't think the executive order changes consent decrees. So we're continuing to move
Speaker 179
1:20:31
down our path that I have talked about before. I'm not going to repeat it, but
Justin Allen
Unverified
1:20:35
I don't think it affects it at all. And from my review of it, Representative, it's direct the Attorney General, the President's directing the Attorney General to look at laws across the states, look at state law and see if there's any state law in place that's contrary to the policy of the federal government
or to federal law and to potentially pursue litigation against those states. We're obviously not talking about a state law in this case. And my guess is if the EO were to have been directed at these three facilities, that it wouldn't be enforceable under separation of powers. Any other questions from
Speaker 209
1:21:10
committee? Seeing none, thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony. We
Chair
Unverified
1:21:16
have other folks here to speak against this bill,
but is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak for this bill? Seeing none,
Representative Trey Steimel
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1:21:32
Sarah Tucker, if you would, please go to the end of the table, identify yourself, and you
Sarah Tacker
Unverified
1:21:47
may proceed with your testimony. Good morning. My name is Sarah Tacker. I am an attorney here in Little Rock at PPGMR Law,
and I am here representing Southwestern Electric Power Company. They are an electric utility serving 128,000 Arkansas customers on the western edge of the state from northwest Arkansas all the way down to Texarkana. I joked with my colleague that as long as I didn't fall down on my way up here I should be fine, and of course I tripped. Great way to start a testimony. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today regarding SB 596. First, I would like to say that SWEPCO is
in agreement with the concerns that Intergy expressed on 596, but I'd like you to know that SWEPCO operates 12 electric generating units in three states, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, and three of those units are here in Arkansas, and this bill is going to impact more than just the three ENTERGY units that are at issue from ENTERGY's testimony. I would also like to state that SWEPCO very strongly agrees with the policy goals stated in this legislation.
There is a critical need and a critical value that dispatchable resources bring to serving electric customers. Reliability and resiliency are imperative, and Arkansans have a need for cost-effective rates. The concern is that the bill is not necessarily going to deliver all of those things. First of all, this bill is going to fundamentally change a regulatory approach to generation retirement. Utilities are currently allowed to make these managerial decisions
and they go to the Public Service Commission generally after the fact and in pursuit of cost recovery to support those decisions are going to demonstrate to the Public Service Commission that those decisions are in the public interest. This is now going to require a utility to go to the Public Service Commission before they are able to make those general managerial decisions. Another concern is that the timing of the process mandated by the bill does not
align with regulatory realities. I've been practicing in this area for 20 years and I have not ever seen a retirement decision and a replacement decision made at the same time. These decisions are often made years apart and that is because the resource planning process is complicated and takes a very long time. time. A retirement decision might be made, as in Intergy's case, 10 years down the road. That's a little early to start making decisions about replacement
generation, particularly because the economics of replacement generation are going to be more time dependent. You are going to want to analyze the value of replacement generation for your customers when it comes a little bit closer to needing to build that plant. This bill is going to tie retirement and replacement together in a way that is actually going to make it more difficult for utilities to make generation decisions, both a replacement and a retirement decision. The bill also discourages
a utility's efforts to generate electricity in the most reliable and resilient way by limiting some of those business decisions that utilities make. Again, those decisions are going to be addressed by the Public Service Commission, but this bill is going to make it a before the fact rather than an after the fact review. There are a couple of exemptions and or exclusions that if this bill were going to work it would need to have and it doesn't have. One of those is that it does
not provide an exemption or an exclusion for a facility that is already beyond its economic useful life. SWEPCO has two plants right now that it is continuing to extend past its original retirement dates because it is currently economically feasible for customers to do so. Those plants are 68 and 66 years old, well beyond their economic life. I think that this bill is actually targeted at plants that would be subject to early retirement decisions rather than these very old
plants that are online, and now you would need to go for a 68-year-old plant, go to the Public Service Commission, and improve a checklist of things to show that it's in the best interest of customers. I'd like to emphasize that SWEPCO is always looking at what is the economic benefit to its customers from its decisions. That is a critical feature in all of the resource planning, and this bill is not necessary in order to encourage the utility to do that.
In addition to those issues, one problem for SWEPCO is that it is subject to three utility commissions, one in Texas, one in Louisiana, and the one here in Arkansas. Requiring pre-approval of retirement decisions is going to possibly put SWEPCO into a conflicting situation with its other retail regulators. This may end up in a situation where Arkansas customers are going to have to pay more. If Texas says SWEPCO should do one thing and Arkansas instructs
Texas to do another, that is going to put pressure on the bill size for Arkansas customers. also does not address the logistics of plants that are co-owned. Intergy mentioned some of that and SWEPCO agrees that that can be a critical problem. The one question that I would ask you to consider representatives is whether or not this legislation is necessary. Act 373 was just recently passed and it did
establish an energy policy for the state. It says it is the policy of this state to maintain adequate capacity of available, reliable, dispatchable, affordable, and resilient electric generation to provide for the existing and reasonably projected future energy consumption needs of all consumers of electricity in Arkansas. It's not necessary to have another bill to establish the policy. You guys have already done that this session. I would also like to let you know that these conversations are already occurring at the Public Service Commission.
This bill essentially is an issue of timing, not subject matter. The substance of this is going to be addressed. The Arkansas retail regulator will be able to have an opinion about this and to evaluate these decisions on behalf of Arkansas rate payers. Thank you for the opportunity to speak, and I am happy to answer any questions that you have. Representative Leidyman,
Chair
Unverified
1:29:02
you're recognized for your question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a quick question. Those two
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:29:08
older plants you talked about, where are those?
Are those in Arkansas, and is Gentry one of them?
Speaker 151
1:29:13
No, sir. That plant is Flint Creek. It is going strong,
Sarah Tacker
Unverified
1:29:16
and its current retirement date, the end of its economic useful life, is currently set for 2038. So we've got a few more years with Flint Creek. So what are the two older ones? One is located in Shreveport, Louisiana, Arsenal Hill, and the other plant is located in Texas. Okay, thank you.
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
1:29:37
Any other questions from committee? Seeing none.
Chair
Unverified
1:29:41
Thank you for your testimony. Seeing no others to speak for or against this bill signed up. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak for or against this bill? Seeing none. Senator McKee, Representative McClendon, recognized for a close
Representative Mindy McAlindon
Unverified
1:30:07
for your bill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, committee, for your indulgence.
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
1:30:13
You know, we've heard a lot about how expensive and inefficient the coal plants are,
because apparently we all agree on the rest of the bill is kind of the gist I'm getting. If that's the case, all they have to do is demonstrate that to the Public Service Commission. So I don't know, I can't understand, I mean, I can't understand why they would be opposed to that other than the quote-unquote timing issue. But I think it's important that the Public Service Commission is looking at these things ahead of time so that we don't get ourselves in a position, because of the federal subsidies that were in place for a long time,
that our customers are experiencing black and brownouts. And I appreciate and I commend the utilities and how they've operated thus far, but they're not closing the coal plants because they're inefficient or old. They're closing them because of an outdated interpretation of the Clean Air Act. That's why they're closing them. So all they have to do is demonstrate that that's the best thing for rate payers and reliability. So in drafting this bill, I did not contemplate, nor did I intend to look at generation outside the state of Arkansas.
I don't think that's going to be an issue. And it specifically won't be an issue for the next two years. So if it does pop up that that's something we need to deal with in 2027, I'm happy to deal with that. But I appreciate your consideration, and I appreciate all the questions. You guys had some really good questions. I think this is a really important conversation. And making sure that we make the right moves as a state to provide for economic development and to make sure that the folks that we represent have power when they need it at an affordable price is my goal. So I'd appreciate a good vote and appreciate your time.
Chair
Unverified
1:31:54
Okay. What's the will of the committee? Representative McGrew, you're recognized for your motion. All right, I have a motion to do pass. That's a proper motion. We have some discussion on the motion. Representative Leitman,
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:32:18
you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, Senator McKee and Representative McClendon, I know you all have worked on this a long time,
and you know I agree with what you're trying to do. And I hate to speak against your bill, but I feel like I have to. Senator McKee, you know that there's discussions at the highest level of state government about forming a working group that hopefully you and I both might be on and to talk about these problems that we've discussed for a couple hours here. And, you know, I believe that's what we need to do. We need to sit down and have discussions because this industry is in such flux right now
that we don't know exactly what's going to happen. I believe your bill would be a really good starting point for that group to look at and be the basis for an energy policy that we need for the state, which we don't have. You can talk to the Public Service Commission and the Department of Energy, and they say, yeah, we've got a plan, but it's not complete. We need one. I think we could use this bill with the bill we've already passed as a base to study.
But the reason I'm opposed to the bill is I believe it might throw some roadblocks in what we're trying to do. That's the reason I oppose the bill. I wish that you would consider maybe putting it in an interim study and we use it for the working group to work on. I don't think the timing is such that we have to do it today. So that's my input, but because of that, I have to be a
Chair
Unverified
1:34:00
no. Any other discussion? Reverend Avutin, you're recognized for discussion.
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
1:34:05
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I want to thank the senator and
the representative for your efforts here. But I'm concerned about the tack, I'm concerned about the path that we're about to pursue relative to what has already been planned and the bill that we have already passed. And I hope that you all will consider, as Representative Leitman pointed out, including your law, your bill, in the study group.
Because energy and power for the state in an economic manner and for economic development, as you both know, and that's the reason you've given so much time, is a plus for our state. We must be a leader in that, but I can't go along with the fact of the additional costs that we may face from the lawsuit, from the consent order that's already been made by the federal court.
And for that reason, I'll be a no vote, which, Senator, I'll discuss with you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All right. Any
Chair
Unverified
1:35:29
other discussion on the motion? Seeing none. All those in favor, say aye.
Representative Trey Steimel
Unverified
1:35:36
Aye. All opposed, say no. No. No's have it. Sorry, your
Chair
Unverified
1:35:46
bill has failed. Up next, Senator Letting, here to
Representative Trey Steimel
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1:35:49
present Senate Bill 331. If you would, go to the end of the table, introduce yourself, and you may proceed.
Speaker 221
1:35:57
Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair, members of the committee, Greg Letting, Senate
Senator Greg Leding
Unverified
1:36:08
District 30. Senate Bill 331 is the last of several bills I have run on behalf of Susan G. Komen over the years. We have worked together as far back as 2017. I have worked with other organizations on bills to help Arkansans in the fight against cancer. To give you a little history of just how we got here, back in 2019 I passed a law that establish licensure for genetic counselors in Arkansas. As you all know, some forms of cancer
are hereditary. And so sometimes you can get a test and it can tell you whether or not you have the gene for a particular type of cancer. And then you can go see a genetic counselor and they can make recommendations as to what you might be able to do to reduce or eliminate your risk of that particular counselor. I spent a day with a genetic counselor back before running that bill. And just one quick example, there was a young person who came in. It turns out their test had showed that they had inherited their father's gene for stomach cancer. Her father had died at a young age, and so it was a devastating realization, but because
of recommendations from that counselor, they were able to take steps that all but eliminated the threat of stomach cancer. What we want to do with Senate Bill 331 is just make sure that there's no reason somebody might not go get that test if they have a clear family history of cancer in their family and it is a hereditary cancer, just to make sure that they can get in there, find out for sure, and then take steps to, again, reduce or eliminate their risk. We do see it as an investment, most importantly, in saving lives by giving people all the knowledge they need to survive, but also in downstream savings.
Minnesota Department of Commerce, when they passed this legislation some years ago, performed a study that showed that the savings downstream from reduced treatments by tackling this on the front end outstripped the cost of the program in that state. With that, I'm happy to take questions. All right. Representative Lundstrom,
Chair
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you're recognized for a question. I'm a
Representative Robin Lundstrum
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little confused, but I stay that way. Haven't we already done something similar to this earlier this year?
Senator Greg Leding
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1:37:59
There was. Representative Fred Allen, House Bill 1079, earlier this session.
It's a great bill that I'm proud to vote for and that Coleman also supports. We see the bills as kind of working hand-in-hand and that with both of them on the books, we would cover even more people than
Representative Robin Lundstrum
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1:38:14
any one bill would by itself. Just a quick follow-up. what are we talking about cost here, and is this something, what are we
Senator Greg Leding
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1:38:22
talking about cost? So there was no fiscal note prepared when Kentucky passed this legislation. The fiscal note for that legislation was zero over in Oklahoma, which has a slightly larger population and about 13,000 more state employees than we do. Their fiscal note came in at $150,000.
And I would also note that Coleman also passed this legislation there, so this bill is similar to that one. I believe the cost in Minnesota, which had a much larger population, the estimated fiscal note was about $300,000. But again, their study showed significant downstream savings that would more than make up for the front-end investment. And I appreciate you bringing those other states in. That's very honest of you to tell us there is going to
Representative Robin Lundstrum
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be a cost. There will be a cost, yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. Representative Tosh, you're recognized for your question. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Dwight Tosh
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And, Senator, you alluded to the fact about Representative Allen's bill. Yes, sir. I remember when he ran that bill, and I've looked at your bill and compared it to his, and yours, it looks like it's going to be a little bit more expensive than what Representative Allen run, and I thought his covered everything, and you said, well, you'd have both of them, but you know as well as I do that your bill will come after his, and if it's signed into law after that, then yours is one that would take effect, not Representative Allen's.
And, Mr. Chairman, one last follow-up. And Representative Lundstrom also touched on this. There's a cost to this, and I don't have a physical impact. Was there a physical impact done on this bill, Senator? There was not one prepared, sir. Well, I think this committee needs a physical impact. So you're requesting a physical impact, Representative Tosh? I
Speaker 228
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am. I think we need to look at that.
Representative Dwight Tosh
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1:40:08
All right. Well, with that being said, I
Chair
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1:40:10
believe we're going to have to wait on the fiscal impact on this bill,
and there's no further discussion on the matter. Okay. I
Senator Greg Leding
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1:40:19
would note this obviously is the last week. I don't know if they'll have time to prepare one. And, again, I don't know that this bill would preclude Representative Allen's from taking the law, but I do think the legislature's goal should be to protect as many people as possible. But I appreciate the committee's time on the last bill I will ever run on committee. Thank
Chair
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you. Thank you. All right. We're going to keep moving along here. We're going to move on to Senate Bill 437.
437. We have Brad Hall or Senator Hester in the room. All right. Y'all be patient right quick. We're going to see if we can find them right quick. We have people here to speak. One second, I've been told. So hold on just one sec. Thank you.
Speaker 209
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All right. We're going to hear Senate Bill 430.
Chair
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I believe, Representative Hall, if y'all would please identify yourself, and you may proceed. James
Representative Trey Steimel
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1:42:16
Eaton, House District 26. Brad Hall, State Representative, District 24. I've
Representative Brad Hall
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1:42:30
got some handouts here, if it's okay to hand out.
Chair
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1:42:34
Yeah, absolutely, and I believe this bill has that last amendment we voted on in committee, so this amendment does exist in this bill.
If you want to speak to that as well, Representative Hall, it would be great.
Representative Brad Hall
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1:42:49
Okay, so a lot of you all are wondering why we're back here on the same bill. There's a lot of confusion on the amendment that we put on the last time on the height requirement in the state, and so we're here today to kind of clarify that confusion.
And we've also got some people here to speak for the bill that wasn't able to make it here the last time. And so what you've got there on your handout is a map of the state of Arkansas.
Now, that is a street map, okay, of all the highways and roads across the state of Arkansas. If you look at that map and they say, you would
say, well, there's too many streets and roads on this map to ever be able to build a city, a school, a church, or anything else by looking at that map. So what I'm saying is when you look at maps
with red lines on them, it is confusing like was handed out to you the last time.
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We basically want to come back to the committee
Representative James Eaton
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today and clear up any clarifications about the amendments was really what we were looking to do
Representative Brad Hall
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today. What this one does is it covers the entire state on 437. It covers the entire state for the regulations. And what we're doing here, and the reason we're doing this, is because we've got an interim study that's coming in at the end of session that's going to take a look at the windmill energy development projects across the state.
And we're trying to get ahead. If we do not act now, the companies will be coming in here and they will be saying, they'll be doing land leases and they'll be grandfathered in and there'll be nothing we can do about it. If we put regulations on right now, we can always take them off in two years once we see what the study shows. But we can never put them back on. I would see
Representative James Eaton
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this a little bit like the crypto of two years ago.
We had to call a special session to correct that, so all we're trying to do is to get ahead of this. We can always relax our regulations, but you can't really go back and increase regulations. I don't think the windmill industry would like it very much or wind turbine industry would like it very much if we said we're going to a 500-foot height on your windmills or your wind turbines and told them to cut 200 feet off the windmill. Obviously, you can't do that, so we're trying to get ahead of this and give the interim study a chance to show what we really want to do.
Chair
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Appreciate your consideration. Any questions from the committee? Representative Lundstrom, you recognize for
Representative Robin Lundstrum
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your question. Thank you, sir. Do we have a due date on that interim study? It seems like
Speaker 242
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that should have already been done. Well, they filed
Representative Robin Lundstrum
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the bill the other day. Okay, that's the missing link there. All right,
Chair
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thank you. Representative Wooten, you're recognized for your
Representative Jim Wooten
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question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question is, where on here is there a line from the north part of
the state to the south part of the state
where this will preclude building a windmill? That's not this bill.
Representative Brad Hall
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This bill includes the entire state. Okay. So you're still intending
Representative Jim Wooten
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1:46:29
to build them in East Arkansas where we have the crop dusting facility? No, sir. What
Representative Brad Hall
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this does is this puts regulations across the entire state of Arkansas where everybody is dealing with the same regulations and not just part of the state.
These regulations will be implemented on the eastern side of the state just as well as
they are on the western side of the state. But they can still be built in East Arkansas? Yes, if they go by the guidelines, then, yes, they will be able to be built. This is not a
Chair
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moratorium. Thank you. Thank you. Representative Ferguson, you're recognized for your question. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
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1:47:15
A quick question. This amendment, is this the same amendment we had last week?
Speaker 120
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Yes, sir. So nothing has changed in this bill from last week
Representative Brad Hall
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to this week? No, there's some confusion because we had to change it twice last week Because of a department error.
Chair
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1:47:32
All right. Okay. Thank you. Representative Veves, you're recognized for your question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a question for you, I think. This is Senate Bill 437. Are we
planning to run Senate Bill 639? Senate Bill 639 is being asked to be passed over by Senator Caldwell. All right.
Representative Carol Dalby
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Representative Dahl, you're recognized for your question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You just stated a second ago, Representative, that this is not a moratorium, but I thought we established last week that this is a moratorium and there's no one that's going to be able to comply, correct? That's what we heard last week, but now you're saying no, they're going to, but it's
the same bill. So in essence, this is killing the windmills in Arkansas, correct, for
Representative Brad Hall
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right now? For right now, there's grandfathered in areas of the state that the project's already going into.
And that's why I gave you that map. The gentleman that came up here the other day, he gave you a map, and he had a bunch of red lines on it. And he said, look, if you look at that, there's no room in the state of Arkansas to put any windmills by looking at his map. And so that's why I wanted to show you how maps can be confusing, because there's a map of the state of Arkansas with all the roads on it, And you cannot find a place to build a city on that map, according to that map. I hope you understand what I'm trying to do. I understand the maps. The maps are unimportant to me.
Representative Carol Dalby
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I don't care about the maps. My question really went to you just said that this is not a moratorium. And I understand those that are already being built are grandfathered in. That I understand. But you said this is not a moratorium. But last week in testimony, the testimony from the witness that you had with you said it's going to be so burdensome, no new windmills are going to be built. So is your intent that no new windmills be built after the passage of this because of the regulations are so onerous that no one can abide by them?
I'm not talking about ones already in place or starting up. I'm talking about from this state forward. No,
Speaker 250
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ma'am. I do not want a moratorium on the windmill industry. So your testimony from last week is
Representative Carol Dalby
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different than what it was today? It wasn't my testimony. It was
Representative Brad Hall
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1:49:50
him. I did not say that it was too... Okay, so it was your
Representative Carol Dalby
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1:49:54
witness that said that. Okay, thank you. Representative Wooldridge, if you
Chair
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would, please let us know how this interim study could work in conjunction with this bill, please. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jeremy Wooldridge there, Representative of District 1.
Representative Jim Wooten
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1:50:07
First of all, thank you, thank the committee for allowing me to be here and just add something to the conversation. Thank you to Senator Hester and Representative Hall for bringing this bill. The interim study has been submitted. Chairman Lynch is going to review that in agriculture. Our hopes is, and the air applicators are supportive of this bill, they're going to be here to testify for this bill. We're hoping that through the regulatory process that this will kind of pump the brakes on the industry, allow us an opportunity to study this over the interim and then come back in 27 with
some legislation that everyone can live with, that everyone's happy with, that creates the opportunity here in Arkansas, but make sure that we understand better than we do now what this impact will be. So I know the air applicators are here. They're going to testify in favor of this bill. The interim study bill has been submitted, and AG will be looking at that through the interim. So we're hoping that this bill, as amended, will pass, and then we can, between the two, have a
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better understanding of what we're working with as we move forward.
Chair
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1:51:13
All right. Any other questions from the committee? Representative Eves, you're recognized for your question. Representative Woolworths, can you expand just a little bit
Representative Les D. Eaves
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1:51:19
more on why we need to pump the brakes on, I guess, on wind energy? I
mean, I feel like in some parts of the state that might be a valuable resource, especially in consideration of some of the other things we've passed. But I just want to get your take on, you know, I guess why we want to pump the brakes.
Representative Jim Wooten
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1:51:39
Thank you, Representative. I appreciate the question. And for me, I kind of relate this back to crypto and what we went through last time.
We passed a bill dealing with crypto at the end of the session and then had to come back and make some changes. My understanding, one of my constituents who's heavily invested in the air agriculture world, they've got some data that they're going to hand out to you guys that I think will help to compel why I feel this way. But there's draft issues. There are issues with our ag pilots as they fly. If there's no regulatory aspect around where these windmills are placed, an ag pilot that's loaded down, it may take two miles for them to go out and turn.
I think there are safety concerns. I think that there are draft downwind concerns, kind of like the dicamba issues and others that we've dealt with. And I think that with agriculture being our number one industry in the state, That's what we have to make sure that we're protecting. And I think this bill allows us to slow the process and get a proper study in place that we know that as we move forward, we're not making decisions for a year or two years. We're making decisions for the next generation as we move forward. We know that those decisions aren't going to be harmful to our number one industry.
Representative Dwight Tosh
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1:52:48
Representative Tosh, you're recognized for your question. Thank you,
Mr. Chair. Representative Waters, just kind of help me to understand your suggestion that we pass this bill because it's got problems, and then we're going to put it into interim study, but this bill, if we pass it, then we vote it off the House floor, then it's going to go ahead and become law. So once it becomes law, but now you're saying we need to put it in interim study. Why would you not put it in interim study to start with if you've got issues with it?
I'm just a little confused on that strategy.
Representative Jim Wooten
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1:53:22
Thank you, Representative. I appreciate that. So we're trying to work in tandem here. This bill was filed prior to the interim study. What I think that we have currently is no regulation, really. It's kind of, for lack of a better term, the wild, wild west windmills can go up and they can be anywhere in the state. This bill passes some regulation, so we're at least going to have some oversight in the next two years from a regulatory standpoint that we're going to look at these projects specifically. I think that slows the process down. We make sure that we've got some regulation in place
instead of just allowing an industry to be completely unregulated for the next two years while we study it. So that's what I think that would
Representative Dwight Tosh
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1:54:00
be helpful. I understand that, and that's an excellent explanation. But by the same token, while we're putting good regulations in place, according to what you're testifying to, we're also putting bad regulations into place based on your testimony. Am I right or wrong? I'm not sure I understand that part
Representative Jim Wooten
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1:54:15
of it. I think that if we pass this bill, we put the regulations in this bill in place,
and if the study produces that there needs to be a change at the end of this two-year period, like we do every session, we'd have the ability to look at this and address whatever portions of the regulation are not good for Arkansas, repeal or change those, and then move forward with a proposed piece of legislation that is the best for the state of Arkansas as we
Representative Dwight Tosh
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1:54:41
move forward. Okay, and I apologize if I didn't make myself clear,
But I've got some crop dusters here today that I think a lot of that's in my area and do a great job.
And I just want to make sure that we are not going to put something into law until this interim study is done that's going to create a problem for them instead of just waiting and doing an interim study and then coming out with a bill that all the regulations, whatever we put in there is good, not putting one in as testimony that I've heard with good regulations and some issues in there that is causing some concern. There's where I'm having a little bit of a problem, understanding the strategy or the process that we're trying to use here.
Representative Jim Wooten
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1:55:24
Does that make sense? Yes, sir, it does. Thank you, Captain. I couldn't agree with you more. The crop dusters that are here are going to speak in favor of this bill. This is a bill that
Representative Jim Wooten
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1:55:42
their industry as we move into this study. Representative Wooten, you're recognized for your question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with Representative Tosh, Representative Wooten. My concern is for the crop dusters. Can you, from the bill, I can determine that it will keep wind industry
from coming into East Arkansas and building facilities during the time we're in the interim study. Thank you, Mr. Wooten, Representative
Wooten. It will not keep them from coming in. It will place regulations on them that may be cumbersome, but the crop dusters and the air applicators, they support this bill. They think this bill is
helpful to them as we move into this interim study. Well, so the bill will permit them to go ahead if they meet the requirements of this bill, but there's nothing in this bill right now that will protect them
other than the fact that the 300-foot limit has been removed. Is that correct? That's correct. They are comfortable with this bill as it's
written, and they are supportive of it, and they're going to come and testify on behalf of
it in just a minute. Well, I'll look forward to listening to their testimony. Thank you. As will I. Representative Layton, I mean you recognize your question. Thank
Representative Jack Ladyman
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1:56:54
you, Mr. Chairman. You brought up, and I talked to some of the crop dusters over there, and I understand their concerns, but you brought up turbulence from the wind turbines.
You know there's an off switch on those turbines. And they can be turned off when somebody's spraying in the area. And I've worked at wind farms for quite a few years, and there are wind farms that do shut down for situations like that. I mean, it's a very simple thing. That can be in the contract, and you can shut them down. So turbulence, there should not be any turbulence when you're flying close to those. All they've got to do is turn them off.
We had a wind farm up in Michigan. turned it off for three months at night because it affected the bats. So I'm sure a company would agree to turn them off for, I don't know how long it takes to spray a 100-acre field or whatever, but I'm sure they'd be willing to do that if necessary. So turbulence should not be in the formula. Do you agree or disagree? Well, I appreciate that. I'm not going
Representative Jim Wooten
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to climb up there and look for an off switch, so I had to take your word on that. But I agree with exactly what you're saying, and
I understand. I don't claim to be an expert on wind, energy, or the industry as a whole. I just want to make sure that my crop dusters and air applicators are able to be heard. So that's the point of the interim study bill is to bring wind industry, agriculture folks, crop dusting folks, everyone to the table so we can make sure that we get something that everyone is pleased with. Well, I don't claim to be an expert either, but
Representative Jack Ladyman
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1:58:30
I worked at them for 13 years. Far more than me. You don't have to climb the tower. There's a thing called a control center.
Chair
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1:58:37
Oh, that's good. So, all right. Thank you. All right. Any other
Representative Dwight Tosh
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1:58:46
questions from the committee? Representative Tosh, you recognize your question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. There's questions for the bill's sponsors, and I had to step out for just a second, and you may have covered it. But the regulations that we've got in this bill, there's not anybody that's carved out. In other words, the regulations, what's good for one is good for all. So we're covering the entire state with these regulations, making no exemptions.
We're not carving anyone out. Am I understanding that correctly? Yes, sir,
Representative Brad Hall
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1:59:11
you are correct. Everybody is included. Everybody is included in this bill. Okay, thank you. Representative McGrew, you're recognized for your
Representative Richard McGrew
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1:59:21
question. Yeah, a question. So nothing in this bill
changed from last week when you ran the bill. The gentleman, there was two or three of them here that said that this would be a moratorium on windmills if this passed. Nothing in that changed, so I'm sure they probably didn't see it was running again.
So we're voting on the same bill that we voted on
Chair
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1:59:47
last week. Yes, sir. All right. Any other questions from the committee? Seeing none. We have people here that are signed up to speak for this bill. Matt Willard, if you would please come to the end of the table and recognize yourself, and you may proceed with your testimony.
And there at the end is, are you Cole Hartley? Yes, sir, I'm Cole Hartley. All right, if you all
Speaker 265
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would please identify yourself, and you may proceed. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members. I appreciate y'all giving me the opportunity to speak about this bill today. My name's Matt Woolard. I'm the owner of Woolard Flying Service and a partner in Elliman Farms in Corning, Arkansas. I'm a member of the Agriculture Aviation Association and currently serve as National Ag Aviation Association Executive Board.
Representative Trey Steimel
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2:00:42
Right quick, if you would. You have a handout. Would you like the handout to be presented? Yes, please. All right. We'll have staff hand
Speaker 265
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that out while you give your presentation. And with me today is Cole Hartley. I'll
Cole Hartley
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2:00:55
let him introduce himself, and then I'm going to make a little presentation. Yeah, my name is Cole Hartley, Mr. Chairman
Speaker 269
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of the Committee. Thank you for letting me speak. I'm currently on and operate Hartley Flying Service in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and I'm the current president of the Arkansas Agricultural Aviation Association. We
Speaker 270
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represent about 300 pilots and operators here in the state,
Speaker 265
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and many of them are present here today. As staff's handing these passouts to y'all, Arkansas leads the U.S. in rice production with 49% of total production as of 2023. That's over 1.1 million acres. As I read through this bill and looking at the economics of it, with covering the whole state, this gives protection to our industry
and gives us the ability to take care of those 1.1 million acres. Farmers depend on aerial applicators to make as many as eight applications a year to those acres. I want to take a few minutes to discuss how wind energy and windmills could affect those acres. There's a safety aspect of making applications near wind turbines.
These turbines themselves are large structures which make it difficult to make applications near them. I have an Iowa applicator that I spoke to about working in this windmill environment, and he made the statement that there are times that they may have to wait over a week at a time for wind shifts so that the turbine heads can turn to a line to where they can work inside of a wind farm. Typical spacing of them make it very difficult for us to get in and get out to make those applications.
The wind turbines themselves disturb the air for miles downwind from which promotes movement of pesticides. This can cause significant crop damage to a farmer that maybe didn't choose to have wind turbines on his property, but there's no way for him to mitigate the risk they will cause to his land. The meteorological evaluation towers used for evaluation of wind conditions in these wind farms are small towers, usually about 200 feet tall, and have very small footprints. Those towers have no markings and are very difficult to see from an airplane.
When talking to these applicators, they say fields that have these wind farms installed become almost impossible for treatments. Between 2010 to 2022, there were 20 accidents involving tower structures, and 10 of those were fatal in the United States. Last year alone, we had 13 fatal ag aviation accidents in the U.S. My industry is a dangerous injury, as is.
The unregulated construction of wind turbines will only make this worse. I ask you to consider ramifications of allowing these structures to be built in Arkansas. thank y'all so we're here
Speaker 269
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to offer an alternative solution to this complex issue as you heard from Representative Jeremy Woolridge we'd like to find a common sense solution where all the stakeholders could come together to meet find what would be best for all of Arkansas instead of the few wealthy landowners driving this narrative
Representative Woolridge will be filing a bill to put in interim study not to die but to allow all Arkansans to have a say in regulating the wind industry, and the bill we would be proposing to study what is the best practice regarding regulations from other states to let
Speaker 270
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us learn from their mistakes. We would ask for a carve-out exemption only on rice acreage that could be certified using the USDA and FSA records. We would also ask for a grandfathering clause
so the entities that have spent money would not lose their investments. All we're asking is for a seat at the table, And we all work towards a common-sense solution that every stakeholder has a say in. Again, we'd like a yes vote on 437 just to get some regulations in
Chair
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2:05:20
place. Okay. Representative Tosch, you recognize for your
Representative Dwight Tosh
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2:05:29
question. Appreciate y'all's testimony, and thank you. I've just got one quick question.
And, yeah, I represent Craighead County, a lot of Craighead, a lot of Poinsettia, and a lot of Jackson. Not all of it, but a considerable amount of it. And I represent a lot of rice farmers and other bean farmers and so forth. And my question is simply this. If we pass this bill, is there any way this bill would have a negative effect on any of the farmers that I represent and that I serve, whether I need to know.
Will it have a negative effect on them? Would it cause them any additional concerns or issues or expenses? As I understand the bill, no, it will
Speaker 265
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not have a negative impact. Well, y'all are in the crop dust. Y'all work closely
Representative Dwight Tosh
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2:06:25
with the farmers, and I know they're not here to speak, But I guess you're kind of speaking for them today, and I need to know that. I want that on record because if it's going to have any negative impact, I need to know it now.
Speaker 265
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Representative Tosh, I will speak. I own a crop dusting service, yes, and I'm also a partner in a family farm. And we farm around 5,000 acres in Clay County, Arkansas. This bill protects those acres for me as a farmer.
Representative Dwight Tosh
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2:07:00
Okay. What did I understand a while ago? Something about rice farmers? I wasn't real sure that they're existing. What was you said about rice farmers? How does that affect rice farmers?
Speaker 269
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The bill we put in an interim study. We would ask to carve out rice acreage. Explain that
Representative Dwight Tosh
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2:07:20
again to me, why you're carving it out. I'm just curious. There's got to be a reason. To get the
Speaker 269
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windmills away from the rice acreage so we can work with the airplanes, if that makes sense. To put a setback from rice acreage. Why? Because that's where we need the airplanes to be working.
Representative Jim Wooten
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2:07:44
That's where they would affect us most. Okay. Thank you all. Representative Wooten, you recognize for your question. Like Representative Lusno, I guess I'm confused, but the first paragraph says on this handout, wind turbines could cause farmers to lose its advantage. The first paragraph, aerial spraying or crop dusting gets more challenging with every wind turbine project erected on America's farmland.
And you're saying that you formed 5,000 acres, and I sold Avgas to many of y'all, and I don't understand. I'm not a pilot, but in this last picture, and in the first picture on the second page, the only picture, It has a whole field full of them.
And how, I mean, I understand an animal study, but it's not going to remove those from the field. And then you testify that, help me out here. I mean, how is it not going to impact your ability to fly and your ability to be safe? That's what I'm worried about. I mean, I'm worried about y'all crashing out there.
Speaker 265
2:09:26
Representative Wooden, Senate Bill 437 has specific setbacks and regulations on where windmills will be able to be built in the state of Arkansas. It's with that, those regulations, we at least have some protection. Right now we have nothing. If one of my customers wants to sign a contract with a windmill similar to what's going on south of Wynn, Arkansas right now, there's no guidance or structure for them to build those windmills.
There's nothing in the state protecting anybody. They can build them at will how they want to build them, randomly, whatever. With some sort of regulation, then at least we do have direction that they have to adhere to to build windmills until this interim study is completed to see what is best for our state. If you look at that picture on that second picture you're talking about, I mentioned the meteorological towers. That white arrow is a tower.
You can barely see it in the picture, but if you get followed down to the bottom of that picture, you're going to see a little brown spot. That's the base of that tower. That's trying to spot that from an airplane. And that's just one hazard that's constructed in these wind farms. If you go to the back page of that picture, the inset picture is an ADCAT flying near a wind turbine. That airplane has a wingspan of 45 feet. Look at the mass of that windmill behind that airplane, how big that structure is.
That's a very intimidating structure to be flying near and around. if they're running there won't be any applications made inside of that wind farm even and i know supposedly they have to have eight miles an hour wind to be able to generate electricity we generally make fertilized applications 15 to 25 mile an hour winds so those turbines would be sitting there spinning while we're trying to make an application at a height of 60 50 to 70 feet
above the ground so we're looking at a clearance of those blades maybe 15 20 feet of clearance that we'd have around those blades while those those things are sitting
Speaker 278
2:11:50
there spinning currently does does that somewhat answer your question yes i believe
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
2:11:56
it does but but again following up on representative tosses i would feel much better that if we would not pass this bill today But send it to the interim committee and be sure it's studied.
But Representative Wilder was shaking his head no, so I guess we won't. I mean,
I understand what you're saying, Matt. May I ask you a question, sir? Okay. Okay, so if you do
Speaker 265
2:12:23
not pass this bill, there's no regulation in the state to control how these things are built. With this bill, there's at least regulation saying how they are to be built. Okay, so a little bit
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
2:12:37
of something is better than a whole lot of nothing. Absolutely. Okay, well, I understand that.
Chair
Unverified
2:12:42
That's country talk. Thank you. Yes, sir.
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
2:12:50
All right, Representative Lunsford, me to recognize your question. I'm in a conflict here. Those farmers are private property owners, and if they choose to put up a windmill, even though I think those things are, I detest them, that's still the private property owner's right to do that. And if y'all can't spray, then they lose out on your services. or you can charge more. So I'm kind of struggling with we're telling them not to do it,
but then we're going to come back and give them regulations to do this. If it's in your way and you can't fly,
Representative Brad Hall
Unverified
2:13:25
then they lose. They can still put it on their property. There's just regulations
Speaker 281
2:13:31
on their setbacks. We're not telling a private property owner that they cannot
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
2:13:36
put in windmills. Okay, but then you put more setbacks on rice farmers? No, that's not in the bill.
Representative Brad Hall
Unverified
2:13:43
That is not in the bill. No, ma'am. Okay. No, ma'am, that is not in the bill. That was
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
2:13:50
his testimony, what he would like to see happen. Okay, all right. So we're not excluding
Speaker 283
2:13:55
or exempting a particular group? This is everybody? No, ma'am, this is everybody. This is
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
2:13:59
all across the state. Okay. I'm still in conflict with the private property owners,
right? but I also get the issue with the flying. So this is quite a conundrum. Yeah.
Representative Les D. Eaves
Unverified
2:14:14
Thank you. Representative Eves, you recognize your question. Thank you. Can you go back to what you said a few minutes ago about you're exempting rice or you want to?
What was that all about? We're not exempting rice. That was just his language. That was just his discussion. That had nothing to do with what's in this bill.
Nothing at all. You wanted to talk about you had some kind of a
Speaker 269
2:14:37
setback for rice fields or something. No, that's nothing to do with 437 at all. That would be on the bill we work on in the interim study later on.
Representative Les D. Eaves
Unverified
2:14:47
So hold on then. So you're wanting some kind of a setback for rice. Why not all the other crops? I
Speaker 269
2:14:55
those crops? Yes, we do, but we're just trying to find a compromise here. You know, right now we have nothing. Rice acreage is what affects us the most, if that makes
Representative Les D. Eaves
Unverified
2:15:06
any sense. Well, I'm with you on that for sure. And
I do agree if we don't do something, then ag pilots are going to get hurt or killed.
But maybe I misunderstood what you're saying, or whoever said it down there, that you wanted some kind of a setback for rice fields. That was
just in the discussion. That has nothing to do with the bill itself. Was that in the discussion related to what would be considered an interim study? Yes, yes. He said he would like to see that discussed in the interim study.
Okay, so there's no guarantees on that. Okay, knowing that,
Speaker 124
2:15:45
is the only thing you spray at rice fields?
It's not, but it's, you know, we go across rice
Speaker 269
2:15:50
a whole lot more than we go across any of these other crops. That's why it makes what Arkansas Agricultural Aviation is so different than any other state. Because of so much rice being grown? Yeah, usually, you know, these other states, they maybe go over our cornfield one time with one fungicide application. In Arkansas, we may go over rice six times, sometimes more than that, in a single season. So that's our concern. Yeah, all right. Thanks
Chair
Unverified
2:16:14
for clearing that up. Representative Dahl, be recognized for your question.
Representative Carol Dalby
Unverified
2:16:20
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think Representative Lundstrom addressed what I was curious about. it seems like, and I'm not sure I have a question because I think she really asked it, but it seems like to me that, you know, on one hand you're wanting to limit these, but then the property owner can't do what they want to do with their property, and if they want to put it in a wind farm, they learn how to spray down low and not up,
I mean, it just is, I'm with her, so I was trying to think if I really had a question. And my other question would be, any of you fly out of state at some of these other states that have these wind farms? And what regulations do they
Speaker 269
2:17:09
have on them? I can't really speak for other states, man. I mean, that's what the interim study would look at
Speaker 289
2:17:15
is, you know, take some of their rules and
Representative Carol Dalby
Unverified
2:17:19
see what they've done so we don't make mistakes here. I understand, but it's my understanding, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, maybe Missouri, they all have wind farms.
They all have farms that get sprayed, you know. And so my question was just, did any of y'all spray in any of these other states, and how have you handled with their wind turbines? That's my only question. I understand what you're wanting in an interim study, but do you fly in other
Speaker 269
2:17:45
states? My business, I've never personally flown in other states with these wind turbines. My business has sent aircraft up there. And they fly around? I had pilots, yes. But you've got to understand, this is, like I said, this is maybe one application a year inside these turbines.
Representative Carol Dalby
Unverified
2:18:00
It's not six trips. Oh, I understand. I understand. Believe it or not, I do know a little bit about farming. Okay. But whether it's one trip or six trips, the wind farm hadn't moved if you're in another state. So, anyway, I apologize. But I think Representative Lundstrom made the point I was trying to figure out. All right.
Representative Trey Steimel
Unverified
2:18:20
Any other questions from the committee? Okay. Seeing none. Thank you, gentlemen,
Chair
Unverified
2:18:25
for your testimony. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We don't have anyone else signed up to speak for against this bill,
but is there anyone in the audience that would like to
speak for against the bill? Simon, if you would, go to the end table and introduce yourself.
Speaker 291
2:18:54
Yeah, I got you. Thank you. You may proceed with your testimony. Simon Mahan: Good afternoon,
Simon Mayhan
Unverified
2:18:57
committee and chairman. My name is Simon Mahan. I was here last week. I'm the executive director of the Southern Renewable Energy Association.
We represent large-scale wind developers, solar developers, battery developers, and I'm based here in Little Rock. Our organization supports sensible regulation, and Senate Bill 437 is not that. We've testified in favor of House Bill 1525, which is Representative Stemmel and Senator Irvin's bill, to require construction and deconstruction standards for wind energy and for solar energy. My understanding is the House is meant to vote on that bill later today,
and we support that legislation. I do want to forgive the pun, but I want to clear the air even without new regulations even without this this legislation wind energy facilities may be required to seek approvals from for instance the federal aviation administration all the wind turbines all the meteorological towers so long as they're over 500 feet tall are required to get
reviewed and approved from the FAA. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of Defense, Army Corps of Engineers, the MIGCON Independent System Operator, or the Southwest Power Pool, among other agencies. Wind energy contracts signed by electric utilities like Intergy, like SWEPCO, those contracts are reviewed by the Arkansas Public Service Commission. Counties are enabled to develop their own rules.
Wind farms have signed county road use agreements here in Arkansas. The counties ultimately still have control whether or not this bill passes. Furthermore, the private landowners have the most control. If a private landowner would like to lease their land for any purpose, whether it's a wind farm or a new radio tower or a skyscraper, they have that ability to say, no, we don't want that on our property. And so the local
landowners have total control. I do want to respond to a few items mentioned about aerial applicators. And I very much respect the folks that are flying these planes. I would be terrified to do it. But I do want to make clear that in many other states, such as Mississippi, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Texas, and many others that have aerial applications and wind projects, they can coexist. You can look up on YouTube these incredible videos of crop dusters in other states
flying between the wind turbines. It's incredible that they're able to do it. Very talented flyers. I do want to note one of the speakers, one of the gentlemen here, mentioned that there were fatalities in their industry last year. I want to be clear, those fatalities were not because of wind energy. We did not cause those. As I mentioned, the FAA evaluates all wind turbines prior to giving a designation of no hazard or hazard. If you have a hazard designation, you can either
resolve that hazard or not get built. The significant amount of regulation in this legislation requires additional work from the Arkansas Public Service Commission to be done and to develop the rules even further. For instance, the bill requires significant new regulation that the PSC has no experience dealing with, including sound decibel limits, environmental impact statements, view-shed analysis, effects on tourism, and others.
No legislative fiscal impact statement has been conducted to evaluate the cost to the Public Service Commission to not only create the rules, but then also potentially implement the rules after it's put into place. As I mentioned beforehand, this bill is an effective ban on wind energy. I understand the desire to get, you know, quote, get out ahead of the industry before we're developed, but let me ask you, what business, what industry would survive waiting
for a two-year moratorium while a study is being taken place? You know, the study committee, I think that's a great idea. We were not told about that committee. I just learned about that committee sitting here at the table. We're in favor of a study committee, so long as we can be invited to participate. We have not been invited to participate in any of these discussions that have been going on, and it's very frustrating because we can work with folks to alleviate real concerns and protect the industries that we have here in Arkansas while co-developing wind energy resources.
These are not mutually exclusive things. Just to sum up, each wind project can represent hundreds of millions of dollars in private investment in rural communities. Voluntary land leases help private property owners keep their property. Wind power can help Arkansas's economic engine, especially in a time of booming power demand. Our ask today is to keep the door opened for balanced development across the state, especially where landowners are willing, transmission access exists,
and we can work with other stakeholders. Again, we support reasonable regulation. We believe regulation should be using a scalpel, though, not a hatchet. And we ask that we not be excluded from developing those regulations over the next couple of years. And with that, I'm available to answer any question. All right. Any questions on the committee? Seeing none, thank you for your
Chair
Unverified
2:24:55
testimony. Do I have anyone here to speak for this bill? You're speaking for this bill.
If you would please go to the end of the table, introduce yourself, and you may
Jeff Tidwell
Unverified
2:25:19
proceed with your testimony. Thank you, Chair of the Committee. My name is Jeff Tidwell. I'm an operator and aerial applicator here just east of Little Rock. And a while ago you spoke in the Midwest how they spray the crops there. Here in the Delta and the Grand Prairie, when you're dealing with rice and other crops, we're precision application.
Which means we're allowed a three-foot buffer either side of our pass line going through these fields. Because what we're putting out herbicides, if you double up, it could kill and damage the crop. And in the Midwest, when they spray the fields, it doesn't really matter. You're putting out fungicides, insecticides. It doesn't show up. You're going around, weaving around the poles. It doesn't matter. They harvest their crop, and everybody goes on. Here in Arkansas, we're very diversified.
We have to fly rice, cotton, soybeans, corn, and what you put on one field will damage or kill the next field. So we have to be very precise in what we do. We're allowed sometimes the width of this table between the crop we're spraying and the one next to it, and we can't damage the one next to it. So with that in mind, and there's no way the precision application will be gone. And I know just east of here, they're planning on building these towers that are going to be 600 feet in the air or above that.
That's totally impossible to work around. And not only that, the environmental impact, the economic impact to the grower, because the yields, without precision application, the yields are going to be down, which means less money per acre. And environmentally, there's thousands of birds that get killed by these blades every year. And we're in a waterfowl migratory area. And not only that, the nation's most protected bird, the bald eagle, are very, very numerous in this area.
And that's the most protected bird in the nation. And that's what I told the people when they came to my office last summer. They had the lobbyists and three of them from the company. And after they did their song and dance, I said, I'm not an advocate for wind turbine. It's not renewable. In 20 years, they're wore out, and they haven't broke even. And without subsidies from the federal government, state government, they couldn't exist. They wouldn't make a profit. It's just a burden to the taxpayer and an eyesore.
And when I come into Arkansas, across the state line, it says the natural state. There's nothing natural about 1,000 acres of wind turbines. It's ugly, and they don't go away. And thank you for
Chair
Unverified
2:28:04
your time. If you would, please introduce yourself, and
Seth Spate
Unverified
2:28:10
you may give your testimony. My name is Seth Spate. My name is Seth Spate. I am also a partner in Tidwell Flying Service and a partner in Prairie Ag Service in Desarck, Arkansas. We operate seven aircraft.
We work from Pulaski all the way up to Woodruff County. And I was, he kind of play on what he said. A lot of how this is going to affect us, yes, they can spray in these in the Midwest, but it's not harmful product that they're putting out that can harm the land or crop next to it. We do a lot of herbicide work, but the bulk of what we're talking about where our concern is, is dry work.
dry fertilizer because 50 to 70 feet off the ground at 160 to 180 miles an hour, trying to do a precision application, and agriculture is the largest industry in our state. When you lose your precision, you lose yield, you lose dollars, you hurt farmers. And then And from the environmental side of it, I challenge anyone who is for this to drive out to parts
of Wyoming, Utah, maybe some of eastern Montana, Dakotas, and look at where these wind farms were chosen not to be upgraded, look at the dilapidated structures sitting out there, and look at the tanked land values that have happened in parts of those places. And I really consider that we have a beautiful state here. And I just am not seeing, as far as for our business and what we do, and as far as for the benefit of the state, I think we're looking at a benefit of a very few at the cost to many.
I mean, I really do. And Representative Lundstrom, I like what you said about could charge more. I wish we could. I mean, but in the competitive business that we're in, it's just, and the last thing we want to do is put one more anchor on the debt burden on our customers because we have to have them to survive just like they need us. So it's a mutual partnership, and I'm trying to speak for the many, many farmers and landowners that we work for and represent today
and say that we deny them our ability to do precision application. It's going to deny them their bottom line. And I thank you all for your time, and I appreciate you very much. Any questions from the committee? Seeing none, thank you, gentlemen,
Chair
Unverified
2:30:45
for your testimony. All right, do I have anyone here to speak against the bill? If you would, please
go to the end of the table, identify yourself, and you may proceed with your testimony.
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
2:30:59
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Jackson Brazel with Weyerhaeuser was here last Thursday and spoke to you guys on our thoughts on this bill and just kind of want to reiterate some of those things that I told you about and make it very clear that this bill is absolutely a moratorium on wind energy. Weyerhaeuser is not against regulation.
We're all for it, all for sitting down at the table with landowners. But this bill will absolutely kill the opportunity for private landowners to enter into a wind project in the state. You got a map earlier with all the squiggly lines on it, and it said it showed you the spots that you couldn't build a school or whatever. I'll tell you, we own 1.2 million acres in the state. It makes us the largest landowner in Arkansas. This bill would limit our ability to have a wind project to zero acres.
It's not little, white, clean areas anywhere. It's zero. We had a bill, the version of this bill, 437, that made it through the Senate was a little bit of a compromise with the 300-foot barrier. It was going to limit our wind opportunities to two out of seven. So you think already we're talking about folks being able to put windmills wherever they want because there's no regulation. You would think somebody with 1.2 million acres would have a lot of places that you could feasibly put a wind project.
We have seven in the entire state. The compromise was going to limit that to two. That compromise has been taken out. We very strongly oppose this bill and hope that you respect Arkansas private property rights. There's also a lot of talk about rice land and agriculture underneath the wind turbines. For Weyerhaeuser, that's not an issue for us because we're able to keep our trees in a sustainably harvest program while we have wind turbines. It's not a guarantee that if a farmer says,
hey, I want my farm to have a wind turbine on it now, that they're going to continue to plant rice underneath that structure. If they decide that this is a more profitable avenue for them and that's their decision as a private property owner, we should
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
2:33:32
any questions. Representative Eubanks, you recognize for your question. Sir, I appreciate your position, and I understand Representative Lundstrom's question regarding private property rights.
It seems like, to me, this is not a permanent moratorium, but effectively it's only in place for two years to allow the interim study to take place, at which point I suspect there would be changes. I can't guarantee that. I won't be here. But I think in the interest of the safety of the pilots that, you know, are flying the crop dusters, you know, I'm taking them at their word on the obstacles that they have to deal with.
And so, but would you not agree that this is in place just basically for sure that we know two
years? I would strongly disagree with that, and that is based on the conversations I've had in the Capitol throughout this session when there's been wind bill after wind bill going on since the beginning, and I've had multiple senators and representatives tell me to my face that they were coming after the wind industry, and that was the point of these bills. So that would be my position on that.
Chair
Unverified
2:34:54
Any other questions from the committee? I'm saying none. Thank you for your testimony. Is there anyone else here to speak for this
Speaker 302
2:35:06
bill? All right. You want to speak against this bill? You want to speak for
Chair
Unverified
2:35:13
or against? Against. All right. Go to the other table. Identify yourself, and you may proceed.
Speaker 299
2:35:31
Good morning. Good afternoon, committee. I'm Max Braswell. I'm the executive vice president of the Arkansas Forestry Association. We have 1,000 members in the state and collectively forced landowners own 56% of this state. 80% of that land is owned by private individuals just like us. I just did the math. That's about 15 million acres of property owned in this state. I can tell you that we are not pro-wind, we're not pro-solar, we're not anti-wind, we're
not anti-solar, we're not anti-lithium or pro-lithium. For the most part, I think we would be pro-lithium. But absolutely, thank you, Representative Lundstrom and Representative Dalby for understanding the private property rights implications of these types of bills and picking winners and losers based on what we like and dislike or the aesthetics of those types of situations. I've watched these bills since the very first one was filed early in the session.
We haven't spoken for or against them, but we had a lot of conversations. I do have members, one of them you've heard from, who has an actual interest in utilizing their property in this manner. We've had a number of landowners who've entered into legitimate contractual agreements on solar projects. I have communicated to my members on a weekly basis, I would love to see us keep forests in forests for as long as possible or forever,
but there are times when people make decisions as private landowners to enter into legitimate contractual agreements for an alternative use of their property. I think what we're doing here is sending a strong message to those people who own that 15 million acres of property in this state that those types of traditional foundational identifications of who we are could be in danger in the future
if we decide, well, what's the next thing that we like or don't like? Maybe you don't like something that we're doing that's been a legitimate forestry practice in the state. So I am here not to argue the merits of wind energy. I'm here asking you to remember that we've always placed those property rights, those private property rights, at the highest levels and would ask you to continue. Is this a kill the wind industry bill or not? I don't know. I think I have agreement with just about everyone who's spoken against it.
Put it in interim study. We've said that from the beginning. Study the issue. But would we be working so hard to put this bill out in front of the interim study if we didn't have an ulterior motive? And I've heard some of those conversations as well, and it chills me to think that we would take the position of, we'll tell you what you can do with your property. Of course, unless it's something that obviously has an absolute, we're not burying nuclear waste on it or something along those lines.
So absolutely, I'm only here as the representative of the group of people that own more acres of land than anyone else in this state, including the row crop folks, to just please put that at the top of your list when it comes to how you're making the decisions. It's foundational to who we are as a state. Put the bill in interim study, and we can do all of the kinds of things that we want to get done. But let's head at it from that direction.
And that's my plea to you. And if you didn't like the bill last week, you should like it even less this week because the bill is here now, and we've got the interim study that's filed, but we still want to pass this bill. Thank you, and I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have. Any questions from the committee? Seeing none, thank you
Representative Trey Steimel
Unverified
2:39:34
for your testimony. We have anyone here to speak against
Chair
Unverified
2:39:41
the bill. If you would, go to the end of the table.
Speaker 304
2:39:47
Identify yourself, and you may proceed with your testimony. Is it on? Okay. Thank you, Mr. Co-Chairman, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. My name is Lauren Waldrop. I'm the Executive Director of the Arkansas Advanced Energy Association. I actually come before you today in a personal capacity. I had no intentions of coming to the end of this table today, but there were some claims that were made about farmers, and so to
that extent just wanted to provide a little bit of color my family still has a farm that we're actually planting rice on currently and I would argue that this bill does harm farmers it takes away their ability to choose what is best for their land and what is best for their operations I don't know if y'all have seen commodity prices lately specifically rice but it's not great and we have seen multiple instances where farmers being able to lease their land acts as a diversified
revenue stream in all sorts of different types of renewable options. And so I think it has recently become politically trendy to ban wind projects. I'm not exactly sure why that is, but what I do know is that one longstanding conservative principle is this concept of property rights, and I think our farmers and our landowners are smart people, and I think we should continue to enable them to make those decisions for themselves. Okay, any questions from the
Chair
Unverified
2:41:31
committee? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony, ma'am. Anyone here to speak for
this bill? Anyone to speak against the bill? Seeing none, Representative Hall, you're
Representative Brad Hall
Unverified
2:41:47
recognized to close for your bill. Thank you, Mr. Chair, committee. One thing that hasn't been mentioned here is Arkansas has a $9.9 billion tourism industry, okay, that these things can affect. We can't wait for two years on the interim study. If we wait two years, they will be signing land
leases with all kinds of people, and then once that's out, they will be grandfathered in, and there's no way we can put the genie back in the bottle to say. It's a complex problem, as you all know, sitting here today. We've discussed this, I guess, what, two days in a row now? It's very complex, but we want a common-sense solution. That's why we need to pass this legislation to come together, all the groups, and do this study to find the best fix for the people in the state of Arkansas.
Speaker 306
2:42:34
Thank you. I'm close. All right. What's the
Chair
Unverified
2:42:46
will of the committee? Motion do pass. Motion do pass by Representative Richardson.
That's a proper motion as amended. Any discussion on the motion? Representative Ledeman, you're recognized for discussion. Thank you,
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
2:42:58
Mr. Chairman. Well, you know, we've sat through this a long time. I'll be brief, but this bill is a moratorium, and there's a lot of misunderstanding.
I started to say misinformation, but that's not right. It's misunderstanding. People don't understand wind because they haven't been around it. I'll give you an example. Crypto was brought up as comparing this. Vestas, which is the largest and oldest wind turbine manufacturer in the world, they're from Norway, they've been building wind turbines for 140 years, for a long time in the States. So it's been around for a long time. It's not crypto. It's not new. We do need a bill that was brought up, setbacks, decommissioning.
That needs to be in a bill. It's not even in this bill, at least the setbacks are not. So we don't need to kill any type of energy production. If wind, solar, coal, gas, you name it, if it's a bad deal, it'll die on its own. Let's don't kill it. Thank you. Any
Chair
Unverified
2:44:02
other discussion on motion? Representative Richard, you're recognized for discussion. Thank you,
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
2:44:06
Mr. Chair. I think one of the things I kept hearing was the private ownership of people's property
and that being taken away from them. But my understanding is that this is not stopping people from putting wind turbines on their property. It's merely saying, hey, we need to have some type of understanding of what's going out there to make things easier and safer for these people to continue to move. So I don't see this as killing the wind industry. I see it as an opportunity for it to continue to move forward and allows for a continued discussion for tweaks to be made
as we move forward with this whole process. So with that,
Chair
Unverified
2:44:45
I'll be voting for it. Representative Eubanks, you're recognized for your motion.
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
2:44:51
Or not motion, I'm sorry, discussion. I just want to
sort of remind the members that we have a moratorium in parts of the state now with regard to what people can do with private property rights in the Buffalo watershed. So I think there is some precedent that's been set that we are already telling people what they can do with their land.
So I just want to remind the members of that. Any other
Chair
Unverified
2:45:26
discussion on the motion? All right, seeing none. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. No. Ayes have it. You have
passed your bill. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, committee. Committee, before we adjourn, I believe we are done. That was our last Senate bill. So I just want to thank you for your work and appreciate your questions and thoroughness.
Agenda
CONCUR IN SENATE AMENDMENT
Number Sponsor Subtitle
HB1746 M. Brown TO AMEND THE UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE.
REGULAR AGENDA
Number Sponsor Subtitle
SB331 G. Leding CONCERNING COVERAGE FOR GENETIC TESTING FOR INHERITED CANCER MUTATIONS; AND TO CREATE THE GENETIC TESTING ACT.=-
SB483 Irvin TO REPEAL CERTAIN REPORTING REQUIREMENTS FOR THE STATE INSURANCE DEPARTMENT AND THE STATE SECURITIES DEPARTMENT; AND TO REVISE CERTAIN REPORTING REQUIREMENTS FOR THE STATE INSURANCE DEPARTMENT.
SB583 C. Tucker TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE COST LISTS RELATING TO PHARMACY SERVICES.
SB596 M. McKee TO AMEND THE LAW REGARDING ENERGY; TO ESTABLISH A STATE ENERGY POLICY; TO REGULATE RETIREMENT OF DISPATCHABLE ELECTRIC GENERATION FACILITIES; AND TO DECLARE AN EMERGENCY.
SB621 Irvin TO CLARIFY ENFORCEMENT PROVISIONS AGAINST A HEALTHCARE INSURER; TO RETROACTIVELY APPLY TO A HEALTHCARE CONTRACT FOR THE BENEFIT OF A TEMPORARY HOSPITAL FACILITY; AND TO DECLARE AN EMERGENCY.
SB602 Crowell TO PROHIBIT INSURANCE COMPANIES AND APPRAISERS FROM REQUIRING AN INSURED TO USE CERTAIN FACILITIES TO REPAIR OR REPLACE DAMAGED MOTOR VEHICLE SAFETY GLASS; AND TO PROVIDE PENALTIES FOR VIOLATIONS.
SB437 Hester TO CREATE THE ARKANSAS WIND ENERGY DEVELOPMENT ACT.
SB639 Caldwell TO CREATE THE ARKANSAS WIND ENERGY DEVELOPMENT ACT.
DEFERRED BILLS
Number Sponsor Subtitle
HB1659 S. Meeks TO AMEND THE UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE; AND TO CLARIFY THE PRIORITY AMONG SECURITY INTERESTS AND ENTITLEMENT HOLDERS UNDER THE UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE.
HB1009 A. Collins TO ALLOW PREGNANCY TO BE A QUALIFYING EVENT FOR ENROLLMENT IN CERTAIN HEALTH BENEFIT PLANS.
HB1014 A. Collins TO REQUIRE COVERAGE OF IN VITRO FERTILIZATION UNDER THE STATE AND PUBLIC SCHOOL LIFE AND HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAM.
HB1409 Long TO AMEND THE LAW REGARDING ENERGY; AND TO CREATE THE ELECTRIC RELIABILITY ACT.
HB1159 J. Richardson TO CREATE THE RETAIL CONVENIENCE STORE SECURITY ACT; AND TO REGULATE SECURITY MEASURES AT RETAIL CONVENIENCE STORES.
HB1354 Lundstrum TO REGULATE PHARMACY BENEFITS MANAGERS; TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING THE STATE AND PUBLIC SCHOOL LIFE AND HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAM; AND TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING CERTAIN HEALTH BENEFIT PLANS.
HB1905 Lundstrum TO CREATE THE BUYER BEWARE ACT; AND TO REQUIRE A REAL ESTATE LICENSEE REPRESENTING A SELLER TO DIRECT THE SELLER TO THE OFFICE OF THE COUNTY ASSESSOR FOR THE CURRENT ASSESSED VALUE OF A RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE PROPERTY.
HB1443 Pilkington TO CREATE THE SECOND AMENDMENT FINANCIAL PRIVACY ACT; TO PROHIBIT FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND PAYMENT NETWORKS FROM USING CERTAIN DISCRIMINATORY PRACTICES; AND TO PROVIDE FOR ENFORCEMENT OF VIOLATIONS.
HB1408 Pilkington TO ALLOW QUALIFYING PATIENTS OR DESIGNATED CAREGIVERS TO PURCHASE MEDICAL MARIJUANA USING A FLEXIBLE SPENDING ACCOUNT OR A HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNT.
HB1868 L. Johnson TO REQUIRE AN INSURER TO PAY A FAIR AND REASONABLE SERVICE FEEDIRECTLY TO A FIRE DEPARTMENT FOR FIREFIGHTING SERVICES BASED ON TIME ON SCENE.
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — INSURANCE & COMMERCE- HOUSE, Apr 14, 2025 | Agenda | 2 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Chair
Unverified
Representative John Maddox Chair
Unverified
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
Speaker 12
Speaker 14
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
Speaker 32
Representative Les D. Eaves
Unverified
Representative Sonia Eubanks Barker
Unverified
Representative Aker
Unverified
Speaker 24
Speaker 58
Speaker 63
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
Speaker 88
Speaker 89
Speaker 101
Speaker 111
Speaker 120
Speaker 93
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
Speaker 13
Speaker 137
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
Representative Kendra Moore
Unverified
Speaker 59
Representative Mindy McAlindon
Unverified
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
Representative Richard McGrew
Unverified
Speaker 170
Speaker 171
Justin Allen
Unverified
Speaker 169
Speaker 175
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
Speaker 118
Representative Carol Dalby
Unverified
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
Speaker 200
Speaker 208
Speaker 179
Speaker 209
Representative Trey Steimel
Unverified
Sarah Tacker
Unverified
Speaker 151
Speaker 221
Senator Greg Leding
Unverified
Speaker 228
Representative Brad Hall
Unverified
Speaker 238
Representative James Eaton
Unverified
Speaker 242
Speaker 250
Speaker 234
Speaker 265
Cole Hartley
Unverified
Speaker 269
Speaker 270
Speaker 278
Speaker 281
Speaker 283
Speaker 124
Speaker 289
Speaker 291
Simon Mayhan
Unverified
Jeff Tidwell
Unverified
Seth Spate
Unverified
Speaker 302
Speaker 299
Speaker 304
Speaker 306