ALC-Executive Subcommittee
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- October 2, 2026
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
0:16
Secretary, if you would, uh, identify yourself for the record, please, and
Speaker 5
0:22
you may proceed. Yes, good morning, Christy Putnam. Secretary of Arkansas Department of Human Services. Sorry, give me a moment to catch my breath. I apologize. Take your time. So we are here to present the role to implement Act 675 of 2023, regarding the broad-based categorical eligibility, um.
Rule and this rule adds a, an eligible definition. It also updates resource limits to $5500 for, uh, households that are in compliance with Act 675 of 2023. All right, um, members, any questions? I know
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:00
I have one, but I will defer the committee first if there's any questions. See no, ma'am secretary, uh,
on this rule, what, what took so long? So the first part of it, and
Speaker 5
1:13
I, I believe, um, Director Franklin has been here to discuss it as
well. Um, this is a complicated issue to understand, but we made it more complicated than it needed to be, just plain and simple. Uh, we were under the impression initially that we needed to look for some state match funding. What we needed to do was look for a benefit that could be extended to all households that could be considered SNAP eligible. So as soon as we, um, received some technical assistance, went back and relooked and got some additional legal clarification on what needed. to happen We then went back in, uh, within about a week's time, we're able to identify a, a benefit that
could be extended to all SNAP household eligible households, and then go ahead and and uh. Do the role, get the roll ready for you all. OK, uh, members, any other questions?
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:03
Madam Secretary, thank you, um, the one thing I will add is I know this is not the only rule that we've had that's taken some, some time to get done and, um, if we could, let's work to be a little more expeditious on these rules. You and I both want that. Thank you very much. Thank
you. um, so members without objection, the, the proposed emergency rules reviewed and approved with review and approval, uh, being effective 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 5th, 2025. Thank you, Madam Secretary. You're dismissed. All right. Next on the agenda, Department of Commerce, emergency rule regarding, uh, community assistance grant program. If the department would come to the table, please.
And if you would recognize yourself for the
Speaker 19
2:55
record, you may proceed. Morning, members, Jay Quinley, director of Legislative affairs for the Arkansas Department of Commerce. What you see before you members is an emergency rule to amend the community assistance grant program rules. This was an existing grant program within the Department of Commerce prior, it had never been adequately fund this session, there was an appropriation passed that increased it to $10 million and the new rule reflects those changes. The two major changes are it increases the pool of
eligible applicants to include certain non-profit. profits and it raises the award cap from $50,000 to $1.5 million. I'm happy to take any questions. All right. Committee. Questions for the department,
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:34
uh, co-chair Eaves. You said certain nonprofits. Do you have any kind of
Representative Les D. Eaves
Unverified
3:37
examples or what you're looking at there? Yes, sir. Let me Pull up the text of
Speaker 19
3:44
the rule. So in this case, these would be nonprofits. That participate in the type of
projects that are covered in the program. So this would be community development and assistance, um, projects, so these would be ones involving the construction or renovation of community centers, libraries, public health and safety facilities, or nonprofits that provide um police or firefighting equipment. Members, any other questions? All right, see no,
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
4:16
thank you for being here, uh, without objection, the proposed emergency rules reviewed and approved and review and approval
shall be effective 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 5th, 2025.
Thank you. All right, uh, next on the agenda, the broker consulting services contract missed there, if you would please. Thank you,
Speaker 27
4:44
Mr. Chair. Jill Thayer, Bureau of Legislative Research. Um, everyone should have in their packets a copy of the broker and consulting services agreement between the
bureau and Stevens. This is based on your approval at your last meeting to select Stevens, um, to be the broker for the new captive program that is currently the legislation's moving through the General Assembly. Uh, this contains all the terms that you saw in their presentation, um, it does, it is contingent upon passage of the legislation, um, and, um, the fees are exactly as we're presented, so I won't go into too much detail because we're short on time. I'll just take any questions.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
5:27
Thank you, Mrs. There. Any questions from the committee? See none What's the will of the
committee? Uh, Representative Rice, you recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Senator Rice, I apologize. I, I've been both.
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
5:40
I'm happy with the title. Uh, I move that we approve the contract and authorized BLR to sign the contract to the Department of Transformation and Shared Services on July 1st, 202. I mean, you've heard the motion to have a second.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
5:58
I have a 2nd, all in favor. Say aye. in your post. Uh, motion carries. Thank
Speaker 27
6:05
you, Mr. Stern. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jill Thayer, Bureau of Legislative Research, uh, you also have in your packet a, a draft master management services agreement between the Bureau of Legislative Research and Willis Towers Watson, who this committee selected to be the captive manager for the, um, Proposed captive program. Again, this complies with all the provisions that were presented
to you in their response to the RFP and their presentation and is contingent upon passage of the legislation. I'll answer any questions. Our
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
6:37
members any questions. See 9 was the will of the committee. Please, please hit your button. Move lady
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
6:48
you recognize. I move that we approve the contract and authorize BLR to sign the contract to the, the Department of Transformation and Shared Services on July 1, 2025.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
7:00
Thank you for that motion. I have a second. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Any opposed? Ayes have it. Motion carries. Thank you, uh, moving on to item E. Uh, there's a report that's. Sorry, miss there. Trying to move us right along
this morning. You're recognized. Thank you, Thayer
Speaker 27
7:24
again for the bureau. Uh, you have in your packets an addendum to the
Acasso Consulting Services, a report on the procurement study, as we were working towards drafting the bill. There was one recommendation they had made just to clarify some language, uh, to do with political subdivisions voting on whether or not to use competitive bidding. Some of the language wasn't exactly clear and as we drafted the, uh, the bill. We realized it needed to be clarified in the report also. So this matches the language that's in the bill that's current, currently going through, and it's just an addendum to their
report for y'all to accept if you
Speaker 37
8:05
choose. OK, um, without objection, we will
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
8:08
accept the addendum for the Acosta report unless there's any questions before we do so. See no questions during the, uh, this is accepted, uh, by the committee
without objection, uh, Miss Gerty. Thank you, Mr.
Speaker 38
8:21
Chair. Marty Gerty with the Bureau of Legislative Research. The next item on your agenda
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
8:26
is the initial report from Olsburg SPI
on the, um, film their film production and study, um, this is, um, as a result of a lot of work, a lot of information working with DFA and Leon and Mira were here for a week, um, interviewing, um, members and persons within the film industry, as well as they went to Northwest. Arkansas, um, there are recommendations in the report and Leon is here to, uh, answer any questions that they might have, that you all might have. Thank you, Director, um,
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
9:04
members, we have Olsburg online if there are any questions
for them. So this would now be the time to Uh, Senator Tucker. You would hit your button once you log in. You're recognized Senator Tucker for
a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, I
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
9:24
know these meetings go quickly, but I just got this right now. Is there any chance, I don't want to be out of order, but we could ask for like a 92nd overview of
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
9:34
the preliminary report or, you know, something. Not, not at all, uh, would ask them to present and the most expeditious manner possible, that overview. Thank you,
Speaker 43
9:46
Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair and thank you, Senator Tucker. So in, in a, in a very brief overview as Ms. Geraghty says, we have now submitted an uh uh first draft of the report. Um, it includes all of our findings to date, and we had a very
successful research trip to Arkansas, interviewing over 30 individuals, including producers, business owners, sector supply chain, those working in the training. sector uh legislators, filmmakers, and so on. And after our visit to Arkansas, we spent some time interviewing, uh, investors looking at the state to bring projects. Um, we also have concluded an initial part of our economics for the study,
and what you have in your packets, I believe, uh, today it has the gross economic numbers, so we're undertaking at the moment an additionality survey, which will move economic dead weight from the numbers and show the net impact of how the Arkansas digital product and Motion Picture incentive is functioning in order to bring um productions in. We don't expect the numbers to change very much because incentives in, in this sector
play a very key role, uh, in, in attracting production. And just, just finally, to wrap up, we also provide a set of key initial recommendations. I think the the key thing to underline is that we did find that there is opportunity for Arkansas in this sector, and in order to, to progress the opportunity there are 4 key recommendations, which I'll just mention as headlines right now. One is related to the re reforming of the incentive, um, and there's a lot of detail in
the study about that. There's a recommendation around uh linking any incentive expansion to an industry development. Strategy, um, there's a recommendation around expanding the film commission and what it, what it does in the sector, and finally a recommendation around improving data collection and publication and clarity. That's a, that's a very brief uh overview of of a lot of information and happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
12:09
Questions from the committee. And you're talking you recognize.
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
12:14
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very, very much for that, Leon. Um, so you hit basically the high level on the recommendations, which is great. Can, at the same level, can you, uh, give us a summary of what you found as at least to the information you have at this point on the economic impact. Yeah, for
Speaker 43
12:30
sure. So we, And again, not to take up too much time, but we have a couple of lenses in which we look at the economic impact. One is the
overall impact, as you, you know, which takes into account all of the production that has used the incentive between fiscal year 2014 and fiscal year 2025 to date. We found that incentivized production had delivered $64.6 million in total GVA for Arkansas over that time, taking into into account direct, indirect and induced effects, and that equates to a return on
investment of around $4.60 again in, in total GVA. And as I say, that's a, that's a gross number. We're still doing the, the work to assess the dead weight, um, so that, that number may come down, but there's certainly a positive ROI. We did find there is an outlier of production during the the time we were looking at one production that spent far in, um, far in advance, uh sorry, far in excess of, of typical productions that are made in Arkansas. So in the
report, we also break down that production individually and productions overall excluding that out loud production to give us thorough view of, um, of the impacts as possible. Was that true Detective season 3? I don't know if we have the, if we were given the actual title, uh, of, of the production in the data set we received. OK. Thank you all very much for your
Speaker 42
14:09
work and thanks, thanks for this preliminary report.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
14:13
Thank you. Thank you, Santa. Right, Reverend
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
14:21
Laman, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, I had a question on your recommendation number 3, where it talks about the number of employees, uh, in the Arkansas Film Commission compared to other states, uh, my question is, uh, how. impactful is that to the overall program, uh, we don't rank very well with these other states. Texas has 12, we have 1.
Is that a major component of uh drawing
Speaker 43
14:49
people in? Uh, yes. Thank you, Representative, for the question. And, and one of the, one of the items we were asked to look at is how does, how does the Arkansas structures for supporting this sector compared with, uh, sort of state neighbors and state competitors and obviously the, the resourcing assigned to a film commission is a key consideration there because of a film commission has, as you'll
be aware, is a, is a key structural component in supporting an industry and supporting its development. Um, yeah, and the, the finding is pretty clear that the, the, the Arkansas Film Commission is, is, you know, very much under resourced when compared with some of the, some of the competitors, which I think, you know, logically limits the amount of sexual development that can be undertaken, but that, I would also point out that that is linked to the size
of the incentive, you'll see also, um, in the In the report that you have that the annual cap for the Arkansas incentive is also very much lower than some of the other comparable states. So those with with larger incentive, uh, incentive budgets or incentive amounts also have a larger, uh, staff function in their film commissions. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, present history recognized.
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
16:19
is there an unlimited supply or need for these grants like if at some point if Oklahoma's doing them and Texas is doing them and Ge is putting out a bunch. If Arkansas puts these up like is, is there, is there enough demand to go around?
Speaker 43
16:35
Thank you. That, that's a, a, a very, very key question, particularly in the industry at the moment, which I'm sure everyone will be aware, has been, you know, has, has had some significant headwinds through, through the pandemic and through some of the, the labor strikes in recent
years. Um, You know, and there is a finite amount of production. I think we've very much taken that into account and in the report, you know, we're not suggesting that the opportunity we've found is for, for Arkansas to target, you know, a huge commitment in terms of investment towards this sector, but given the fact there are, you know, there are, there is a sector in state and there are, you know, there are
opportunities for our consor to attract more production. It's about sort of pegging that ambition to what is realistic for, for the state. So I think there certainly is an opportunity, but it, it, it needs to be sort of carefully calibrated, um, to ensure that, that, you know, that the state is
Speaker 55
17:34
the state is investing in the right way. I, I would say. All right. Any other questions from the committee?
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
17:50
Say none. Thank you, uh, for the report, presentation, and, uh, Uh, I think we will spend some time looking at it. Thank you. Moving on to Uh, Senator Tucker, you're recognized. So
this is the preliminary. Do we have a timeline for? A final Director Gerty, if you would. Spoken with Leon and Mira and um
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
18:11
the second part will take about 2 months. OK. All right. Thank you. All right, um,
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
18:25
Moving on to item G. Um, members Coa consulting agreement, uh, they're currently working with OSP to assist with rule changes that legislation, um, is making its way through in the process. Um, so we, um, You know, they're going to be working to do trainings and, and all the things related to the original contract, and so we, we feel like, uh, since the contract expires May 1 that we need to extend this to allow that time to continue to work. So with that, I will, uh,
entertain a motion to, uh, approve the extension for 3 months on the terms of the costso contract. Do I have that motion? I have motion. I have a 2nd. Any discussion on the motion? See none, all in favor say aye. Any opposed? All right, thank you. Uh, moving on to item H, waiver requests, uh, Conway School
District, please come to the table and recognize yourself for the record, please.
Speaker 59
19:34
Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee, uh, Doctor Jeff Collum, Superintendent of schools for Conway Public
Speaker 60
19:42
Schools. And I'm Chastity Wagner. I'm the chief legal officer
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
19:46
for Conway Public Schools. Thank you. Thank you for being
Chair
Unverified
19:49
here. Um, would you proceed? Thank you, Chair. Um, as I stated, I'm Shasity Wagner with with Conway Public Schools. We are here today to, um, request to exceed the cooperative purchasing for construction services, aggregate amount in accordance with Arkansas code
annotated 1911 249 um D. This request is for a renovation of Bob and Betty Courtway Middle School to start as soon as students leave in May and then be finished when they return in August. We're happy to answer any of your
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
20:20
questions. All right, Representative Evans, Speaker Evans, you recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, Doctor Collins, I appreciate you and your team being here today and just following through, um. With this process specifically as it was laid out by the legislative council. I think this is, uh, Um
This is good work and making sure that we're following this process, uh, also just want to commend, uh, one of your directors, Eric King, uh, who was available to answer some questions that I had, um, and I appreciate the fact that you're using local vendors on this and, and, and helping with the the local economy and folks in the Conway district. I did just have one question, um, over on the Four Seasons Service Company estimate, I noticed that multiple times throughout that estimate, it says that like Conway.
public schools will provide materials and labor. Conway Public Schools, or CPS will provide necessary gas piping materials and labor. Is that something that you typically try to do in these projects, utilize just just in-house, um, Resources to be able to minimize the expense on these projects. Yes, sir, in my 4 years there,
Speaker 59
21:26
um, our maintenance team has done an incredible job, uh, trying to pick up the labor parts and our labor actions as much as possible. Uh, they do a quality job. Uh, you mix that
with the quality, uh, partnership with these vendors that works very well. Uh, we've already delay delayed this project a a full year, uh, and in order to get this moving, uh, that's why we had to go through this process to get here today.
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
21:50
Uh, we understand the the time sensitivity of it. Uh, being able to do these projects, especially in an elementary
school to be less disruptive for students while the project is going on, so thank you for presenting this and uh following the process. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Uh, any
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
22:08
other questions from the committee? See none to have a
motion to approve? Motion 2nd, any discussion? See not all in favor say aye. Any he post, eyes have it, motion carries. Thank you for being here. Thank you. All right, members see no further business. Thank you for your time this morning and, uh, we are adjourned.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration of Emergency Rules:
C. Discussion of Broker and Consulting Services Agreement by and between BLR and Stephens Insurance, LLC
D. Discussion of Master Management Services Contract by and between BLR and Willis Towers Watson, Ltd.
E. Addendum to Ikaso Consulting Final Report for the Procurement Study Recommendations
F. Presentation of the Initial Report in the Motion Picture Production Study by Olsberg-SPI
G. Amendment to the Consulting Services Agreement by and between BLR and Ikaso Consulting, LLC
H. Consideration of a Waiver Request for Cooperative Purchasing Construction Services - Conway School District
I. Other Business
J. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
Speaker 5
Speaker 19
Representative Les D. Eaves
Unverified
Speaker 27
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
Speaker 37
Speaker 38
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
Speaker 43
Speaker 42
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
Speaker 55
Speaker 59
Speaker 60
Chair
Unverified
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified