A subcommittee of the Arkansas Legislative Council on Thursday rescinded its recommendation that the council impose a new requirement on the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to seek the council's review and approval of proposed agency rules.
The action came after commission Director Jeff Crow informed the council's Executive Subcommittee in a letter that the commission directed its staff to provide copies of proposed rules and regulations in the future to the staff of the Bureau of Legislative Research.
A separate legislative panel -- the Game and Fish/State Police Subcommittee -- subsequently met for more than an hour Thursday at the commission's enforcement training center in Mayflower to hear from agency officials about four approved hunting and fishing regulations as well as updates on feral hog eradication and the turkey population.
"The action of the [Executive Subcommittee] is greatly appreciated because that takes a little stress off the situation that had developed about a week ago," Game and Fish Commission Chairman Steve M̶o̶r̶g̶a̶n̶ Cook* of Malvern said Thursday in an interview.
In May, the Legislative Council changed its rules to require its Game and Fish/State Police Subcommittee to consider proposed rules of the Game and Fish Commission for discussion purposes.
But the Game and Fish Commission's reluctance to file its proposed rules with the bureau's staff led the council's Executive Subcommittee on Sept. 18 to recommend that the Legislative Council impose a tougher requirement on the agency by mandating the commission seek the council's review and approval of any proposed rules.
Commission officials had declined to file their proposed rules with the bureau. The commission's legal counsel, Jim Goodhart, said last week that commission officials viewed the legislative rule adopted in May as an infringement of the agency's independence as granted under Amendment 35 to the Arkansas Constitution.
Instead, the commission filed its rules after they were approved.
Senate President Pro Tempore Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, maintained that another part of the Arkansas Constitution -- Amendment 92 -- grants the authority to the Legislature to require the council's approval of state agencies' rules before they go into effect.
Crow said in a letter dated Sept. 22 to the Legislative Council's co-chairmen that the Game and Fish Commission has directed that staff members for the Legislative Council "be added to public distributions of commission rules and regulations when initiated" in an effort to "promote a more seamless exchange of information between the two bodies."
"As we learned when Chronic Wasting Disease was detected in Arkansas in 2016, intensive interaction and collaboration between the commission and our state's legislative branch is valuable," Crow wrote in his letter to the co-chairmen, Sen. Bill Sample, R-Hot Springs, and Rep. David Branscum, R-Marshall, and copied to Dismang and House Speaker Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia. "In those, and all cases moving forward, we re-commit to offering our expertise and resources to you, when and where needed, so we can serve and inform our constituents to the greatest extent possible."
With no debate, the Executive Subcommittee on Thursday approved a motion by Sen. Terry Rice, R-Waldron, to rescind its recommendation from last week that would require council approval of the commission's proposed rules and regulations.
"We have an agreement ... to have the rule proposed at the front end to have any discussion," Rice said after the brief meeting of the Executive Subcommittee. "I look forward to working with Game and Fish on any constituent issues and knowing a little bit more about what's going [on]."
Asked if last week's dispute was a power play by the Legislature aimed at having control over commission rules, Rice said, "My interest is that my constituents and all our constituents have a voice in the process.
"I personally don't want to rule over the Game and Fish Commission. They have a science base, a history base," he said.
Crow said in an interview that "my understanding is when we send our regulations for public comment that we will include [the bureau's] staff on those.
"As far as them going to the [Game and Fish/State Police] Subcommittee to be added to the agenda, I don't know that that's the case," he said. "My understanding is we're just going to make sure that when those go out for public comment that anybody that wants to see those have access to them, any member that wants to see them.
"We don't want to do anything that would make it appear that we don't want to have a dialogue with anybody about anything that we are proposing. But we want to be very transparent and very open to input, but we want to have the freedom for our commission to pass regulations the way that the framers intended with Amendment 35, to do that absent interference," Crow said.
Bureau of Legislative Research Director Marty Garrity said the bureau's staff will advise the co-chairmen of the Game and Fish/State Police Subcommittee -- Rep. Josh Miller, R-Heber Springs, and Sen. Greg Standridge, R-Russellville -- when the bureau's staff receives the commission's proposed rules. The two lawmakers will decide when the proposed rules are placed on the agenda for committee meetings.
"We'll kind of get the feel of what the [subcommittee] wants to do and see. ... I don't have a problem with that at all," Miller said.
But Miller said, "I was against [the Executive Subcommittee's recommendation] because I think there's a lot of constitutional questions there with Amendment 35.
"I just don't think the Legislature needs to be in the business of deciding hunting and fishing regulations and that's where that was going," he said.
M̶o̶r̶g̶a̶n̶ Cook* said in an interview that whether the council's recommendation would have infringed on the separation set in Amendment 35 or would have been allowed by Amendment 92 "is definitely a gray area right now."
"As far as as a commissioner, I took an oath to support [Amendment] 35 and I am going to stand to do that," he said.
Metro on 09/29/2017
*CORRECTION: Steve Cook is the chairman of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. His last name was incorrect in a previous version of this article.