ALC - Occupational Licensing Review Subcommittee
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Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
0:19
right go ahead and call this month's meeting of the occupational licensing subcommittee to order and I don't have any comments and Senator Wallace has indicated likewise so we're going to go ahead and jump on into this. So without objection all entities scheduled for the July meeting have been moved to today so we'll have four entities that we will be reviewing today and we'll go ahead and jump into this. The first entity we'll be looking at is the state board of
accupuncture so if those representatives would have a seat at the
table that'll be exhibit C1 colleagues in your packet? and then when you gentlemen get
settled in there if you would introduce yourselves to the committee Matt Gilmore
Speaker 10
1:15
department of healthalth Russell Burns director of the state board of acupuncturelated techniques. OK, thank you
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:21
gentlemen. any opening comments that you have before
Speaker 7
1:24
the committee I think Mr. Burns has a few comments and some things about the board he wants to speak to and then we'll
Speaker 10
1:33
take any questions y'all have right sounds good Mr. Burns The Arkansas state board of accupuncture and Related techniques was created by Act816 of1997 the purpose of the board is to protect the public from those persons who were untrained and unqualified to practice acupuncture and related techniques
licence those individuals who meet the qualifications for licensure under the act and here and resolve such disciplinary matters as may come before the board currently the board is composed of four members and meets twice a yeardd additional meetings are scheduled as needed to address issues such as voting on licensure addressing complaints and rule promulgation the board offers one type of license and there are41 active
licenses as of this time this reflects an average growth rate of one additional license per year for the past five years the board encourages growth in the number of licenses by actions such as reduce fees for the past four years developing plans to implement online licensing, working with stakeholders and association to assist and provide technical advice and processing licenses
as quickly as possible. I thank y'all for your continued support of the acupuncture board and we'll do our
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
3:05
best to answer any questions that you may have all right thank you gentlemen only question that that I have is I'm not overly familiar with acupuncture. could you give us some examples of some things that acupuncture helps with
Speaker 16
3:18
the benefits that it provides well we have several modalities that involve the application
Speaker 10
3:23
of heat or cold also the insertion of needles into
different areas of the body we deal with a lot of joint and muscle pain as well as flexibility issues there are outlying but good parts of
Speaker 16
3:36
acupuncture that deal with other type of mental aspects but I think we've hit the gist of all gist of it ok right Colleagues any questions on this one?
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
3:45
all right seeing none without objection we'll consider this review
thank you for your time and for being here today. Thank you folks next up we have the state board
of pharmacy think looks like Mr Gilmore is going to stay down there but if you would please introduce yourself to the committee and then yes sir I'm
Speaker 27
4:15
John Clay Kirtley. I'm the director of the Arkansas State Board of pharmacy. OK
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
4:19
and then any comments you have about where the board's at. Absolutely
Speaker 27
4:23
just as a quick overview, Arkansas State Board of Pharmacy was originally established by the legislature
via Act50 of1891. interestingly it was at the push of physicians in the state that we're trying to protect the public health and welfare of the citizens of Arkansas by ensuring that legitimate distribution of medications and legend drugs will be done by qualified pharmacist boards made up of eight board members we have6 pharmacists and 2 public members one of those public members is a senior citizen representative for the state of Arkansas board meets in full sessions that are regularly scheduled at least3 times a year and oftentimes has additional cold meetings and we'll have
anywhere from3 to7 of those a year depending on the needs of the board especially in questioning applications that we have we have three specific individual permits or licenses for different human applicants basically we have pharmacists we have interns that are student pharmacists in colleges of pharmacy and we have pharmacy technicians and you can see from some of the data we've had constant growth in that if we go back to kind of a tenure look to 2015 to current our pharmacists have grown by30%.
our interns have shrunk just a little bit just due to a decreased class size in college deformacy and our pharmacy technicians have grown by47% overall permit numbers for those three over that 10 year period have grown by35% the board does have a a big point that we have not raised any fees since the mid 1990s in any fees for any of our applications or licenses we've also actually removed some of the legislative or regulatory barriers to get rid of some permit fees and some
endorsements that were required we've also tried to institute some some real time saving things such as online applications to help expedite the process for people to get their permits another thing that we've really done to try to help drive pharmacists and help especially in rural Arkansas was the establishment of a rural loan slash scholarship program through the two colleges of pharmacy those loans have given out over $2.17 million over about the last 10 years to student pharmacists go into their junior senior year that intend to return to practice in
rural areas of the state they do that for36 months that boat becomes a scholarship brand loan if they do not meet criteria they pay it back and we will give it to someone else be happy to
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
6:45
answer any questions that you have. OK it looks like we've got a few Senator Johnson, you are
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
6:54
up first, sir. some not on yet ok thank you Mr Chairman Mr Kurtly thank you for work you do I have a issue that I am concerned about and I just want
to get your perspective on it from from state board of pharmacy we have a high cost of drug problems we have a high cost of health care problem especially in rural areas and all the things we brag about about Arkansas and where we are on cutting taxes and school choice and all these other things I'm proud of we got an obesity problem and I remember our former congressmanic Snyder who is a
doctor during the medicare Part D but I visited with him and he said you know Medicare will pay if you have diabetes and you have to have your leg cut off they'll pay the in those days about30,000 dollars to have your leg cut off but they won't pay for the drugs to keep you from having to have your leg cut off and he thought that was rather foolish I did too nowadays we we have a tool in fighting obesity and it certainly has a lot to do with diabetes is our GLP one drugs and I am very
cognizant and paying close attention to anything that I think hurts the availability of those because again let's let's save the leg and you know help people if it helps them lose weight and many people have testified to that fact it was brought to my attention that at one time a clinic that was prescribing the the GOP ones or we're suspensing them directly to the consumer and they stopped that and said that it it
was at your office and our and they didn't say you they just said that the the state regulators said we can't do that anymore and now they're getting mail order in lieu of that and I don't know if that's any better from a regulatory standpoint or not but can you enlighten me on exactly where you are on that and I'm not saying let every clinic hand people medications out the door but this is again a a problem that is there there's a lot of this
is almost like a a snowball going down a hill I mean if if we could cause people to lose weight when they need to then there's no telling what the savings not just in their health outcomes but to to our medicaid bill and things like that could you could you bring me up to date on'll do my best to
Speaker 33
9:31
answer it and if if you need any further expansion offline I'd be happy to meet with you about
Speaker 27
9:37
that and I'll tell you it's really easy to always blame the state no matter what the situation is we know that when we take these
jobs we're in the same boat with this and and I I don't know the very specifics of maybe that specific issue but I can tell you that with GOP ones you know our greatest concern is that people have a a reputable safe supply of it there are also regulatory criteria for the state of Arkansas both statutory or rules not just with pharmacy board that limit possibly how those medications could be delivered or dis p ens ed for the patients to take home some of that deals with we have had several
pharmacies or non pharmacy entities that look like pharmacies and say they're sending products that they're not legitimate products or they have not done the work to get a license to distribute into the state of Arkansas so we've had several instances where we have sent a cease and desist order and then we will work with those entities if they are a a licensed pharmacy somewhere else to get them licensed in the state of Arkansas to appropriately distribute those drugs here that we've also had instances where people that are in clinics
that receive those drugs if they're repackaging those to then dispense to patients there are federal guidelines or or nationwide kind of standard of care policies that when you repackage those drugs they're supposed to be done in a sterile environment so that you don't put that patient at risk so we we've had various conversations about that but we do have several pharmacies in state and out of state as well as outsourcing facilities when they could produce those that are licensed in good standing and able to to send
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
11:19
those products into into our state well and I have no complaint whatsoever about you doing that and I I encourage you to thank you for doing that but I I'm I'm I'm very knowledgeable I'm not knowledgeable I'm trying to become more knowledgeable on a particular and sometimes unexpected impediments to this and again it's because sometimes it's a fine line and I appreciate you you're the one who has to straddle that line sometimes but in the case it was brought to my attention you
know this was a a clinic where all the clinicians there were licensed by the state of Arkansas and some either the doctors or nurses or whoever and I just want I wanna make sure that we're not that we're encouraging people to for healthy outcomes as opposed to discourage him so I look forward to visiting with you outside this venue and appreciate your answer Mr chairman thank you for the
opportunity to ask a question hepresentative Carolyn Brown you're next
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
12:20
thank you Mr chairir. Mrurtly, my question is kind of along the same lines excuse me I received a questionnaire this week that was asking me all about compounding pharmacies and maybe even out I don't know I can't I don't have it in front of me even out of state compounding pharmacies that are sellinggLP ones I just thought that compounding pharmacies were licensed just
like any other pharmacy is there some distinguishing something that distinguishes them other than the fact that they do their the
Speaker 27
12:59
compound meds I would say there's two potential things that are slightly different that that get confused as part of this and one is you have traditional compounding pharmacies which you may have one down the road from you that does some very minor compounding making things such as the the oral antibiotic for your you know small child that they can't take pills they need
a liquid or customizing a formula with a different flavont to help with ease of administering that to your child or to your pet then you have larger volume pharmacies that specialize in sterile compounding specifically now in the state of Arkansas we put both of those under one permit we don't have a a secondary permit they're required to get to do sterile compound but we do inspect them at a higher level for the quality measures of that some states have a completely separate permit or an extra
application and endorsement process if they're going to compound at that level and then you have what are known as503 B facilities which are outsourcers and they're able to make duplicates of commercial products that are in short supply which we saw a lot earlier when we had severe shortages of GOP1 products they're held to a much higher standard as far as their FDA registered FDA inspected and generally the state that they're in would also do a higher level if inspection for them
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
14:25
well I think you answered my question and just at this questionnaire just went on and on and on and I thought well maybe there's something mysterious or dangerous here that I'm not getting so that's why I ask you the question thank
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
14:40
you very much uhpresentative bentley you're next thank you all
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
14:44
for being here today. a couple of quick questions. was looking at your answers as far as complaints and answering those complaints have we removed any pharmacist's license that you that you're aware of in the past
few years or I I was just curious of which had to get to
Speaker 27
14:59
that point I believe I know the question you're speaking to and we did have one instance where there was someone claiming to be a pharmacist that had never met the minimum criteria to be a pharmacist they had not passed their board exams and had not become fully licensed and we did remove them from practice and had a hearing based on the fact that they had been involved in the filling of prescriptions without a pharmacist present in the pharmacy so we we have had one instance of that we really
try hard with our website being able to validate licenger as well as we have a very strange answering system at the board of pharmacy we use humans to answer the phone instead of computers unless we're all on the phone so we've had a couple of instances where we've headed off instances of people coming in the state and trying to act like a pharmacist that we're not as well great a quick follow up chairman if that's
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
15:47
OK so I know that you guys are very diligent to inspect these pharmacies and make sure that our constituents being well taken care of can you tell me
the what's your timeline and how often are you inspecting these pharmacist and what's your protocols I believe it's pretty stringent but
Speaker 27
16:05
it's like to know. Sure thing right now I just asked our inspectors previously this week right now we're at about a 12 to15 month turnaround time on our retail pharmacy inspections throughout the state and that includes pharmacies that may or may not be doing compounding our retail permit covers pretty much all pharmacy activities other than hospital operations so if they are compounding if they're doing long term care if
they're even mailing prescriptions that's all under the retail and and we're at 12 to15 months. thank
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
16:34
you and I appreciate us allowing our pharmacists as much as they can take care of our constituents
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
16:41
thank you ma'am if y'all haven't any like issues with the kind of along those lines like a malpractice where something wasn't done correctly or wrong medicine or do you deal
Speaker 27
16:50
with that we do have complaints on that and we have some fairly stringent criteria of how staff handles those to bring them before the board whether that is a
misfilled prescription which is probably the most common thing we have or if someone got something they weren't supposed to and looking at going back to try to do a root cause analysis of not only how did this happen but how
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
17:12
to prevent it in the future all right uhpresentative Steele you're next. thank you
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
17:18
Mr Chairman could you allude more to the prescription by mail and kind of where we are it's been a little while since the session I know there was some debate about that and dialogue where did we end up
after everything after the dust was settled and where are we now as far as the ability to actually send prescription drugs to people by mail, especially in rural communities so on the
Speaker 27
17:43
we would call it homeme delivery I believe it was in 2023. it may have been in 2021. I'd have to go back and look the legislature passed a bill to to direct the board of pharmacy to promulgate rules for home delivery standards which we did we've implemented and part of our home delivery standards
it includes clauses such as the fact that I mean it has to be a licensed pharmacy with the state so we validate that they have a license in their home state or permit we will look at their at their inspection for whatever their overall kind of class of work of what they're doing and then get it here and part of those rules they have to they're required to reach out to the patient and get approval from the patient prior to the billing, filling or mailing of a prescription to the patient so the patient is involved in that process and understands what is being billed
to them and sent to them and when they could expect to have it a couple things the legislature did which are unique and I think very progressive for Arkansas is if there is something that in that mail process if the patient is not going to be able to receive that care in the timely manner they need to continue their care that out of state entity would have to have a plan on how that patient could get that prescription either from a local pharmacy or another source in a timely manner so we wait to see if there would be complaints on that we've had a few that we've had some mainly education and
kind of rethinking processes to straighten that out but there is a a very clear ability for patients
Speaker 37
19:12
to receive those medications through the mail with
Speaker 63
19:16
those guidelines one follow up Mr Chairman if I may what's
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
19:20
the percentage of patients taking advantage of that just sitting here talking to Representative Barnes I'm not very many I know in my district or even aware of it let alone taking advantage of it and I I
Speaker 62
19:31
apologize that's not something that I'm necessarily privy to when I
Speaker 27
19:35
generally hear it it's because of a health plan that
either directs or pushes patients towards that you also have things like tricare and some of the medicare plans that push that are VA that that is their their main benefit area but
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
19:51
data to tell you atri percentage on it. I asked because we provide transportation is the health department do under Medicaid to go to the doctor's office but oftentimes there's there's no assistance at all to going to actually pick up your prescriptions so I I would say we do have in
Speaker 27
20:09
Arkansas we're blessed that we have a lot of pharmacies in different communities that deliver directly to their patients so instead of using common carrier mail FedEx or UPS they have a delivery driver I mean the pharmacy I worked at here in LittleRock we had delivery driver service and we had several shut in patients we had patients with different disabilities we had a blind couple that there was no way they could drive to the pharmacy and and we took care of them through those methods.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
20:40
ok representative gonzalez you're next thank you Mr chair. Well
Gordon Watkins
Unverified
20:43
I just had one very simple question but then talking about some of this other stuff brought up another so in impersonating a pharmacist is is that criminal and if so how how did y'all bring them before the board if you don't if they didn't have a license and they're not licensed under the pharmacy board what authority did you have to bring them
Speaker 72
21:01
in front of y'all so then did it get turned over to prosecutor I guess and'll I'll answer the last
Speaker 27
21:07
question first. yes we did turn that over to law
enforcement. I don't know that anything else happened with that but many years ago the the legislature for as I understand it several health licensure boards actually did give us the ability to take action against unlicensed people for the illegal practice of pharmacy or medicine or something else this specific example was unique because the person had been a licensed intern with the board and we could also take action on that internal license that they had and had an application with the board to be a pharmacist so
we're also taking action on that application of in and of
Gordon Watkins
Unverified
21:45
itself so what actions can you take against someone who doesn't have a license period well in this
Speaker 62
21:50
instance they did have a license under a different thing the but you I
Gordon Watkins
Unverified
21:53
think you just said you had authority to bring people who were unlicensed in front of the board but I was just wondering what what authority I believe in
Speaker 27
22:02
that instance the main authority that the board had and I would defer to our our legal counsel for any further clarification was the board would consider whether or not they would take any future application from that
individual after they had impersonated a pharmacist
Gordon Watkins
Unverified
22:16
illegally. OK all right other my original question was about pharmacy techs are they licensed or certified or they're
Speaker 27
22:23
what's the technical term is registered with the board of pharmacy because they do not have necessarily a required professional education besides or beyond a high school diploma or GED they're registered with the state
Speaker 38
22:35
so there are some people use licener interchangeably but the technical term would be registered. OK thank you
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
22:45
and last question that I have and I ask this of of most of our folks is where where are we at with pharmacy you talked about the growth in the number of pharmacists in the state which is encouraging are we where we need to be is there still more growth that is needed to make sure we're taking care of our citizens and then anything you're doing I think you'd already mentioned some things you're doing to try to promote pharmacy in general within the state. I
Speaker 27
23:10
I can give some general comments and I would forewarn that if you ask ive different people in leadership
positions in pharmacy you're gonna get about seven different answers on this I would say that we are very fortunate in our state that we do have a permitted pharmacy in every county of the state and a few years back we had a a county that did not have that we do see closure of some pharmacies especially in rural areas where there seemed to be some potential staffing issues for those specific stores but we do have a healthy supply of pharmacists in the state we have a lot of pharmacists that are doing things other than
working in just a pharmacy you know they're working in other areas of healthcare or assisting in clinical capacities and hospitals or in even medical clinics but we I believe personally that we do have a good supply of pharmacists but we've got to keep that supply going through our colleges of pharmacy and attracting people into that profession well it looks like we have
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
24:05
a last minute question from Representative Bentley. thank you chairman. I
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
24:10
appreciate the latitude. So I guess my curiosity is going now so do we have a uniform training system for our registered pharmaceut techs since we're allowing them
to give immunizations and different things which I I appreciate the ones in my pharmacy, I think they do a great job but just curious if is there a uniform training that we do that we say in Arkansas are our pharmacy techs can receive this in many hours before they do this specific task or I'm just just curious
Speaker 27
24:34
now that's a that's a fun one because we have their minimum qualifications for overall registration with the board it's passing the criminal background check showing proof of a high school diploma or GED equivalent or they have been to college and we can basically vet it through that process that they have that
level of education if they want to do what we would call kind of an advanced activity such as administering immunizations there is a a program that is uniform that they would have to get that training for the administration of medications much like we would do with physicians or nurses or pharmacists. Great thank thank you chairman I appreciate thatpresentative garner thank
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
25:12
you chair and I wasn't going to ask a question either until we started talking about GOP ones but that brings up
an interesting question I think in that we've talked a lot or there's been a lot of talk in the news lately about other peptides as well and just wondered how you guys are relating to that information in Arkansas are we do we do anything with matzi matzi but it3 whatever it is or can that be distributed into Arkansas and that is an
Speaker 27
25:47
extremely difficult question unless you start naming a very
specific peptide that you're talking about and then you have to dig down into I'm I'll say this frankly see if I get in trouble later but the federal bureaucracy around the approval of those products is has become quite convoluted and confused due to social media I I think saying this is now available when technically it may not be so the the concern that I would have from the board of pharmacy perspective of protecting public health and welfare is no matter what the status of that is you
have to have verified chemicals that are suitable for human use consumption injection or or treatment in order to make a legitimate medication to be used and right now and people will get mad at me saying this some of the peptides don't really have a legitimate supply of those drugs under the FDA federal framework but that is what is going through the federal government right now working towards that OK great thank you very much colleagues any last minute questions? all right seeing none and gentlemen thank you for your
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
26:54
time and for being here today without objection we will consider that reviewed and next up we have the auctioneer licensing boardard. and ladies when you get settled in there if you would just introduce yourself to the committee and then any opening comments you might have Lacey Kirchner counsel for the department Kellyla, director of the
Speaker 95
27:24
auctioneers licensing boardard. OK please go ahead
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
27:27
with any testimony you have. I don't
Speaker 96
27:30
really have much else to say other than I am open to answering any questions that anyone
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
27:37
has. uhpresentative Perrier looks like you're up first sir let's get you turned on there you
Representative Chad Puryear
Unverified
27:42
go so got a constituent that had a had his auctioneer license and was an auctioneer back in'89 I guess the state made it where you had to have a license somewhere in that process they
his license lapsed due to like a scheduling conflict that the old number I think it's the AALB number so is that old number that he has is it dormant or has it been reissued? It has
Speaker 95
28:11
not been reissued but it would not be able to be reissued to him. OK and why is that with our new system, anything that isn't migrated over then the license number didn't come over and we cut off any of that from I think
it was 21, which was when we migrated
Speaker 96
28:31
to the new system so that no one all of the new numbers matched the new system
Representative Chad Puryear
Unverified
28:37
so it's impossible for him to get the old number reassigned based on the way the software works that's not the answer I'd love to hear but you know because I look on number 10, you know you talk about the license would lose value reducing the professionalism and the reputation and I would think you would want the folks that have a lower number license for that to
reflect their in that you know so there's no way your system will allow that to happen. Correct. OK. thank you. Thank you OK uhpresentative Bentley you're up Let get turned on
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
29:12
here. thank you chairman thank you ladies for being here today. I didn't see
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
29:17
in here what your annual expenses and that you have60,000 dollars in reserve so is that over and above what you need annually for your expenses or we think about any scholarships for this leftover money are just curious what your
Speaker 95
29:33
yes ma'am that would be enough for us. there is no excess funds and I'm sorry what was the rest of your
Speaker 96
29:38
question? No was just curious if Id didn't
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
29:41
know what your annual expenses were but if that covers it and there's not a bunch left over that's what I was
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
29:50
curious about. ok thank you very much ma'am looks like ruppper or excuse me
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
29:56
Senator Johnson you're next. thank you again Mr Chairman I just had a question about kind of who's license and who's not and make sure I haven't done
anything it violates the law or anything sometimes nonprofit organizations raising money will have have items donated to an event they're having and they'll be an auctioneer that that will auction off these items the money goes to the organization doesn't go to the au ction e er or anything if someone that is not licensed and just kind of say hey would you auction this off and is that
person in violation of our regulation or is it if they're not being paid they're not hiring themselves out except for a charitable situation like that is that allowable? Yes, sir.
Speaker 95
30:44
that's correct. if they're not taking any money for that and they are doing the auction for the nonprofit. they do not need a
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
30:51
license. OK well it makes me I'll sleep better at night knowing
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
30:54
that thank you very much thank you Mr chairman you say you're not feeling guilty over there senator ok just check all right Representative gonzalezchrup thank you Mrir. So
Gordon Watkins
Unverified
31:07
that was kind of my question or 11 of my questions I guess was getting into the exceptions for licenger I see that we if you're a livestock auction at an auction barn you don't have to be licensed and and then it says there are other exemptions as well so charity auction is one what are what are some other exemptions in that exemptions so you can you can auction off your own stuff your own items yes sir and why why I know this probably happened a long time ago but why the s cell barnes
Speaker 98
31:38
did they why did they get I don't know the
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
31:46
answer to that interesting long before me so same question how are we doing in the field? we have enough auctioners in the state? is this something that needs to be promoted just kind of what's
Speaker 95
31:56
the state of the occupation? I think we are set as far as our numbers we can always increase we definitely don't want to you know tell anyone not to become an auctioneer in the state. I think with the online auctions it's definitely increased our
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
32:09
numbers so I I think we're right where we need to be. OK
sounds good. right colleagues any last minute questions? all right saying none thank you for being here without objection we will consider that report filed and one last one motor vehicle commission And once you get settled in if you'll
introduce yourself to the committee and then any opening comments. Good afternoonrector Daniel Pace Arkansas Motor Vehicle Commission and you have my report and questionnaire
Speaker 113
32:41
I can just give you a brief description of what we do for those of you that are not as familiar the motor vehicle commission is responsible for licensure of all franchise dealers in the state and that is for automobiles, motorcycles, offroad products, RVs, commercial trucks and also LSVs and we're also responsible for the licensure of all manufacturers and distributors that sell and distribute those products in the state. and with that I'll take
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
33:09
any questions right thank you so
first question that I have is being in Faultner County, Conway area, in your report you talked about the issue going on up its superior
Speaker 112
33:24
Rv what's the what's the latest on on that yes superperior RV so the commission actually held an administrative
Speaker 113
33:30
hearing in June to address some issues that Superior RV it's one of the rare times where we've had to revoke a license in this instance the gentleman Mr. Block is also
facing some felony criminal charges from Faulkner County over some of the similar issues that his license was revoked for he was also issued a fine will we be able to collect that? I don't know but he no longer has a license with the commission so I
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
33:57
was that business has been shut shut down completely then at least for the
time being or would have to be sold
Speaker 113
34:04
or my understanding is is it is shut down at the moment but also we'll be on the lookout for him potentially opening up a different business from what I've heard so we're we are
paying attention but regardless he still has a4,000 dollars fine and in order to be licensed he would have to come back to the commission and basically prove to the commission why he
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
34:25
should have a license so and does would do you are they required to take any kind of tests to or get inspections to get that license or is it just fill out paperwork pay your fee
Speaker 113
34:38
significant facility requirements that the commission has that you have to meet and also since it's a franchise dealership you're also
going to have requirements that the manufacturer and distributor placed upon you as well beyond what we place upon you so there are facility requirements service requirements obviously manufacturer warranties that sort of thing but there's no test right Senator Sullivan
Speaker 116
34:59
you're up sir. thank you do you license boats Senatorulllivan we do not currently license boats no
Speaker 113
35:05
sir that is done throughdF andA at this time thank you thank you Mr Chair. any other questions?
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
35:18
OK. So I'm guessing I know the answer to
this but kind of like the the last ones where we at as far as having enough I guess motor vehicle locations across
the state to make sure the needs are being met given this is a different kind of market I'm sure we're good but just your thoughts on the state of where we're at with that. Yes sir. I
Speaker 112
35:41
I think those in the industry would tell you we would always welcome more dealers and manufacturers and distributors
Speaker 113
35:49
in the state. I think we're in a pretty good spot with that. I think from just feedback I hear from dealers on a daily basis what they would tell you is the real growth area that we need is in service and repair technicians I would say in that in that instance what I hear all the time from them is it's a very highman profession and a low supply so and that's part of what we do with our grant program is to try to help grow that in the state but that is that's what you'll hear from a lot of dealers is that they are short of technicians to work at the
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
36:19
dealership is that is that something you're doing to high schools through CET programs or colleges or where you focus that at
Speaker 112
36:27
so it's high schools and colleges that
Speaker 113
36:30
have eligible automotive service tech programs this past year we awarded 12 different programs both high school and college $250,000 in grant money from our fund and we intend to do that every single year that we can as long as we can keep that going but yes it's high schools and colleges OK all right thank you
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
36:50
all right colleagues any last minute questions? OK, saying none pretty painful. thank you for for being here without objection we'll consider that last one reviewed. again colleagues after reviewing all these if you have any recommendations on any changes and to include in our final report, please email those to our staff our next meeting will be Thursday, September 17th at 1:30. Nothing else on our agenda we are adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Comments by the Co-Chairs
C. Review of Occupational Authorization Entities:
D. Other Business
E. Adjournment
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 10
Speaker 7
Speaker 16
Speaker 27
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
Speaker 33
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
Speaker 37
Speaker 63
Speaker 62
Gordon Watkins
Unverified
Speaker 72
Speaker 38
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 95
Speaker 96
Representative Chad Puryear
Unverified
Speaker 98
Speaker 113
Speaker 112
Speaker 116