Official: State not out dump money

McKenzie weighs in on fire issue

ROGERS — Taxpayers will recover state money spent to put out a dump fire in Bella Vista, the area’s state representative said Saturday.

At least one lawsuit has been filed against current and former owners of the now-abandoned landfill where a smoldering underground fire has burned since July. Smoke from the fire permeates the area near the Trafalgar Road site, state Rep. Gayla McKenzie said in a lawmakers’ forum Saturday. The Rogers-Lowell and Greater Bentonville area chambers of commerce sponsored the 9 a.m. forum at Rogers Heritage High School.

The fire needs putting out as soon as possible, said McKenzie, R-Gravette. The Legislature passed a $20 million appropriation last week to begin fire-fighting efforts. “We have got to recoup that cost to the taxpayer,” McKenzie said. The litigation process, however, takes months at least. Whoever is ultimately found liable will have to pay the state back, she said. “We have a responsibility to make the state whole again, to make the taxpayer whole again,” she said.

In other issues, a bill is coming soon to remove the requirement that female state inmates be shackled when giving birth, said Rep. Rebecca Petty, R-Rogers. McKenzie, Petty and Rep. Jim Dotson, R-Bentonville, were House members

attending the forum along with Sens. Jim Hendren, R-Gravette, and Cecile Bledsoe, R-Rogers.

The shackling of prisoners even during childbirth was an issue of debate in past sessions, but Petty said the Department of Correction and others have a possible solution that would prohibit shackling for all but for the most demonstrably dangerous inmates.

Audience members asked Bledsoe, chairwoman of the Senate’s Health Committee, why the Legislature was adopting so many restrictions on the sale of medical marijuana. Such sales were approved by the state’s voters in 2016. Bledsoe and Dotson responded the amendment itself requires the Legislature to enact the proposals of the state commission overseeing the production and distribution of the marijuana.

“That’s all these bills are doing, codifying the Medical Marijuana Commission’s regulations,” Bledsoe said.

Dotson also said that changing laws approved by the voters requires a twothirds majority vote in each chamber of the Legislature, a high threshold. Measures to change either the law on medical marijuana or on a voter-approved minimum wage increase will not have an easy time of it, he said.

Hendren, who is president of the Senate, also said a detailed tax bill should be introduced by the end of this week that will set out the details of collecting taxes for sales on the Internet, among other things. For instance, there will be a state income tax change that will reduce taxes for local banks by a total of $2 million while raising an estimated $12 million by allowing state banks to use a tax calculation already available to out-of-state banks, he said.