Having failed to stop legislation that it fears will raise educational fees for bail bondsmen, a newly formed coalition of bondsmen is taking aim at a bill that would change the makeup of the state’s bail-bond licensing board.
John Kiesling Jr., founder and treasurer of Arkansas Bailbondsmen Professionals Inc., said his group plans to fight House Bill 1386, which would bar the chairman of the state’s Professional Bail BondCompany and Professional Bail Bondsmen Licensing Board from being a bail bond company owner or agent.
Kiseling said the bill is an act of retaliation by its sponsor, Rep. Hank Wilkins IV, DPine Bluff, against the board’s chairman for testifying about legislation, signed by Gov. Mike Beebe this week, dealing with education for bail bondsmen.
The chairman, Curt Clark, owns a bail bond company in Rogers and will have to step down as chairman if HB1386 becomes law.
In a letter sent by Arkansas Bailbondsmen Professionals Inc. to bondsmen across the state last week, Kiesling and the group’s president, David Viele, called HB1386 “pure harassment.”
Kiesling said members of the group plan to speak against the HB1386 when it is discussed at a meeting of the Professional Bail Bondsmen Licensing Board today.
The debate is part of a dispute between Kiesling’s group, which was formed last month, and the Arkansas Pro-fessional Bail Association, an industry group that pushed for the bail bondsmen education legislation.
Wilkins said HB1386 is meant to “get at the root” of what he sees as a conflict between the Professional Bail Association and the board, which regulates and licenses bondsmen.
The conflict “boiled over” during the debate over the legislation on education for bondsmen, Wilkins said.
“I’ve introduced that legislation to suggest to both the industry and to the board that if we need to reorganize the board in order to make sure that things work in an efficient and effective manner, then I’m willing to do that,” Wilkins said.
As for the bill being retaliation against Clark, Wilkins said, “I dismiss that out of hand.”
“It may feel like retaliation to someone who doesn’t want to sit down at the table of compromise and agreement, but that’s not my motivation,” Wilkins said.
Wilkins was a co-sponsor of the bondsmen education bill, which was introduced as Senate Bill 56. The bill was signed by Beebe on Wednesday and became Act 36.
As originally written, the bill would have shifted authority for regulating the courses offered to bondsmen from the licensing board to the Professional Bail Association. An amendment, introduced by Wilkins on Feb. 1, gives the association a role in soliciting the course providers and setting the fees for the classes, but keeps final approval with the board.
Wilkins said he signed on as a co-sponsor of SB56 after learning that only three providers have been approved to offer the courses.
“That was actually kind of shocking to me,” he said, considering that the state has 540 licensed bondsmen who are required to take continuing education classes every year.
He said he hopes that having the association involved in offering the courses will increase the number of providers and classes.
“Right now, it appears thatthe offering in terms of classes is not very broad,” Wilkins said.
The bail bondsman licensing board voted Jan. 31, before SB56 was amended, to oppose the bill. Clark, the board chairman, said board members hadn’t heard any complaints about the educational courses and had concerns about authority over the classes being given to a private organization.
Kiesling, a bondsman with Beth’s Bail Bonds in Jacksonville, said he fears the legislation will give the association a “monopoly” on the educational courses and that it will use its new authority to charge higher educational fees to companies that aren’t association members.
Currently, the providers charge $200 for an eight-hour course required for obtaining a license and $200 for six hours of continuing education classes that bondsmen are required to take every year. The providers are approved by theState Board of Private Career Education and the bail-bond licensing board.
The Professional Bail Association’s goal, Kiesling said, is “narrowing it down to a single provider, with the association having total control over the continuing education.”
Jimmy Ibison, who is vice president of the Professional Bail Association and a member of the licensing board, said he does not expect the educational fees to increase and that the association has no plans to offer classes itself.
He said he doesn’t expect any of the groups that currently offer classes to be eliminated.
“As long as these providers want to be the providers, they will be providers,” Ibison said. “The only thing is, they’ll have to go through the association.”
Ibison added that the association had “nothing to do” with HB1386, which he called “an awful bill.”
“This board has been doingexcellent work,” Ibison said. “Just because somebody gets mad about something ... isn’t a good reason to pass a law.”
In addition to specifying that the chairman cannot be a bail bond company owner or agent, HB1386 would add two additional members to the board, shorten the terms of board members from seven years to three, and specify that the chairman must be selected by the governor.
The bill contains an emergency clause saying the current makeup of the board is “unsustainable.”
The board’s chairman called that characterization “nowhere near true.” In the past year, Clark said, a halfdozen of the board’s decisions to issue sanctions against bondsmen or bail bond companies were appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court of Court of Appeals, and all of the decisions were upheld.
“I think our record as a board speaks for itself,” Clark said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/18/2011