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Senate State Agencies
Jan. 24, 2023
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Sen B Johnson: Chair sees a quorum. Come to order in Senate State Agencies. We will begin with House Bill 1023. Representative Fortner just introduce yourself and you’re welcome to proceed.
HB 1023 Require flags purchased with state funds be made in USA
Rep Fortner: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a very simple bill, but it’s very important to me. Of all the bills that I have run, and you know that I don’t run many, I have gotten such an outpouring of support for this bill. It was almost unbelievable. But what this bill is, it says that all flags that are purchased with government or state funds, with taxpayer funds in the state of Arkansas, will be made in the United States. And that’s simply what it says. And I would certainly appreciate a good vote.
Sen B Johnson: Thank you, Representative Fortner. Any questions from the committee? Seeing none, you want to close your bill?
Rep Fortner: I’m closed.
Sen B Johnson: All right. What’s the will? Motion, second. All in favor say aye. All opposed, like sign. Thank you.
Rep Fortner: Thank you all. Thank you so much.
Sen B Johnson: So I have one more order of business and that’s the committee photo. When would we like to do that? Next Tuesday or next Thursday? Probably before the committee meeting. Anybody got any preference?
Sen Payton: I prefer Thursday.
Sen B Johnson: You prefer Thursday? You look better on Thursday? Okay. Is there any objection to Thursday? If there’s no objection, we’ll do it Thursday before the meeting. Senator Tucker, he was running a bill in another committee.
Rules and agenda discussion
And whenever we were under COVID protocol, we had rules that whenever a bill come in here, it was under– what was it called– inactive. An inactive. This is just something for y’all to think about. Senator Tucker thought it was a good idea. It would go into inactive until the sponsor requested it be placed on the agenda. See, we have three bills and two of them wasn’t going to run, but they’re always going to be on the agenda until they run them unless they defer them. They request to be deferred. So yes.
Sen Flowers: Well, I don’t know, are the rules in here, but–
Sen B Johnson: That’s what I–
Sen Flowers: –if a bill has been on the regular agenda for so many times–
Sen B Johnson: Three times, I think.
Sen Flowers: –three times, and if, okay, so this SB four has been on here. This is the second time. So it has one more time before it goes to deferred?
Sen B Johnson: Yes. It’s just another option of where the sponsor could request it to be put on the agenda and we would put it on the agenda rather than be just two columns. There would be an inactive, a regular, and deferred. So it’s up to the will of the committee.
Sen Flowers: And I had one other question. I thought I had pulled up the calendar on Saturday. And I thought I saw where the Senate State Agencies meeting was canceled. And then I just happened to pull up the calendar again last night. And I saw it was on for today with an agenda. So what to expect in terms of what we see on the calendar, I mean, how many hours or days?
Sen B Johnson: We try to set that two days in advance.
Sen Flowers: So weekends are considered for purposes of establishing one day, two days, whatever?
Sen B Johnson: So we set it on Sunday, I think it was Sunday.
BLR Staff: We set those on Friday.
Sen Flowers: For Tuesday, they’re set on Friday. I’m fairly certain that I did see meeting canceled Friday. Might go back and look, but I was kind of thrown off.
Sen B Johnson: It was Friday afternoon whenever I responded because I looked at the bills. And it was Friday afternoon whenever I responded. And I don’t know when.
Sen Flowers: When did it go on the calendar? Friday? I thought I had pulled it up this weekend and saw meeting canceled. So I’d like to make sure we follow the rule on that and have at least two days’ notice.
Sen Payton: We were here Thursday?
Sen B Johnson: We were here Thursday, yeah.
Sen Payton: Because I’m like her, I thought I pulled it up and I saw deferred. I mean, saw canceled. And I hit refresh. And when it refresh, it showed, but that was last night, early this morning when I pulled up, and when I hit refresh, then it showed we had a meeting.
Sen B Johnson: Yeah. You’ve got to refresh or it’ll go back to your last– it’ll go back to your last viewing. So go ahead, Senator Dotson.
Sen Dotson: Just back to your original question on deferred. A senator can request or a member can request that their bill that’s on active regular agenda go to deferred. It doesn’t have to be there for there for three, right?
Sen B Johnson: No. Well, we would have to suspend the rules. Unless you wait two days, we would have to suspend the rules to take it off of deferred.
Sen Dotson: But just so if before we’d heard it, it’ll go off after Thursday’s meeting if action is not taken. But if you reach out to the bill sponsor and staff says, “Do you want it on there? Or do you want to send it to deferred if they’re not ready to run it?” They can do that without needing to have another inactive status bill, right?
Sen B Johnson: Yeah. I mean, he can come Thursday and amend it and then run it next week, or however he wanted to do it or put it on deferred and we could do it next week.
Sen Dotson: But bills when they get filed are automatically put on after two days. There’s one day to prepare it. Because I have filed something yesterday.
Sen B Johnson: It was read across in the committee yesterday, so that didn’t give it–
Sen Dotson: So it needed to be on Friday for this day’s– need to be filed Friday to automatically come on to today’s calendar? Okay. Yeah. Thank you.
Sen B Johnson: So just think about the possibility of going back to the inactive calendar or it’s up to the will. Senator Tucker had suggested that people that see our agenda and don’t remember how it was before the COVID where you just had a list of bills and so if we can discuss that if Senator Tucker feels more passionate about it, but I just wanted to put it before you guys. So that possibility. But if there’s no other business, we are adjourned.