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Legislative Council Executive subcommittee
March 7, 2022
Wardlaw Struck from the agenda, so we’ll move to C. And Mrs. Thayer, you’re recognized to go into C.
Thayer Thank you, Mr Chair. Jill Thayer, Bureau of Legislative Research. You all have in front of you draft council rule updates, and I’m just going to go over the couple of places here. All the changes are red in your packet. And the first change is on Page 2. This is adding a study to the review subcommittee regarding the Office of State Procurement. And this is looking at the benefits to state agencies of procuring a statewide contract with a consultant. Then, on Page 5 under the Personnel Subcommittee, Act 113 was one of your EBD package of bills and is creating a new EBD subcommittee, so this is just removing those duties from the Personnel subcommittee. On Page 7, at the direction of the leadership, this is removing or repealing the AHIM subcommittee. And there’s language at the beginning here that states that the members of that subcommittee will now serve on the new subcommittee that’s formed on the next page. So Page 8 under Act 113, this establishes the Employee Benefits Division Oversight Subcommittee. The language here regarding the duties of that subcommittee are pulled directly from the Act. They will hear, similar to the lottery subcommittee, all items that would normally go to other subcommittees will– contracts, rules, that type of thing– will go to this subcommittee if it has to do with EBD. And then you have a separate page here in your packet. Those are all the changes in the, in the big rules. This one, I wasn’t sure where to place it, so we set it out as a standalone page for you to look at. This is related to the law enforcement officer money that is being provided. And we don’t have an act number yet on that one, although it has been sent to the governor. There’s an appeal process in that bill that sends it to Legislative Council. So in the event that the secretary of the Department of Finance and Administration makes a determination that moneys have been paid out inappropriately and attempts to pull those back, the law enforcement agency can appeal that decision and the appeals to the Legislative Council. So I just left this blank as to which subcommittee this would be assigned to. However, there has been some discussion of sending it to the Peer subcommittee due to the financial aspect of the appeal. But that is for you all to decide, and I’ll stick it in the right place once you do. Those are all the changes.
Wardlaw Without objection, we’ll send it to Peer. Any member have any objection to that? Without objection, this rule is adopted. So with that, we’ll go to Mrs. Garrity for discussion of March and April meeting dates for ALC.
Garrity There’s been a request with the timing of the fiscal session and the March dates for council to postpone the March council date and then to have the first meeting of Legislative Council in April. The original dates were going to be April 11-15, and the request is to move that back to April 18-22. So Legislative Council will meet on the 22nd, and its subcommittees would meet the 18-21.
Wardlaw Seeing no objection, please provide notice.
Garrity We’ll send out notice to all the members. I’m going to go to the directors reports. It’s just two quick items. Under the law, I’m required to give an update to this subcommittee on the status of the Code of Arkansas Rules. Our staff has been working hard on this and this last month, we had our first set of rules approved by the Department of Agriculture as codified. We’re making good progress. The agencies have been great to work with. The working group at the executive branch, which includes the AG’s office, has also been great to work with. So we’re moving along on those. Also, we are moving along on the special language project that we’ve been tasked to do to begin to codify special language that has been just re-promulgated year after year. This last Friday, Matthew and Kevin and I met with Robert Breck and Jordan Burgess to talk about the process and to talk about the agency’s involvement with that, and so we’re moving forward. The idea is that in the October budget hearings, you will see the executive rec, the current language, and then the proposed codified special language.
Wardlaw Thank you for that report. Seeing no further business, we stand adjourned.