ROGERS -- Taxpayers will recover state money spent to put out a stump dump fire in Bella Vista, the area's state representative promised 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, R-Gravette, said in a lawmakers forum Saturday in Rogers.
The fire needs to be extinguished as soon as possible, she said. The Legislature passed a $20 million appropriation last week to begin the firefighting efforts. "We have got to recoup that cost to the taxpayer."
The litigation process, however, will take months at least. Whoever is ultimately found liable for the blaze 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."
Also attending Saturday's forum were Reps. Rebecca Petty, R-Rogers, and Jim Dotson, R-Bentonville, and Sens. Jim Hendren, R-Gravette, and Cecile Bledsoe, R-Rogers.
Aside from the stump dump fire, they took the opportunity to discuss with constituents other issues, like a coming bill to remove the requirement that female state inmates be shackled when giving birth.
The shackling of prisoners even when they are giving birth has been an issue of debate in previous legislative sessions, but Petty said the Department of Correction and others have a possible solution that would prohibit shackling for all but 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.
An amendment allowing such sales was approved by state's voters in 2016. Bledsoe and Dotson said 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 added that changing laws approved by the voters requires a two-thirds 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 face an uphill struggle, he said.
Also, Hendren, who is president of the Senate, said a 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.
Metro on 03/10/2019