newspapers before opening their tax books. Now, instead of posting in a newspaper, county collectors can send tax state- ments directly to the person or entity owing taxes. Tese are just two examples of many codes that required some attention so the law would be clear, and we could answer questions con- fidently in the future. Te County Judges Association of Arkansas didn’t have as many big issues to tackle this session, but they had a rather large number of bills in their package. SB305, sponsored by Sen. Ronald Caldwell and Rep. Mike Holcomb, is now Act 440. Act 440 increases the procurement bidding threshold for construction from $35,000 to $50,000. SB456 by Sen. Gary Stubblefield and Rep. Lanny Fite is now Act 435. Tis act increases procurement bidding thresholds for commodities from $20,000 to $35,000 and provides for adjusting thresh- olds based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) at five-year intervals. HB1699 by Rep. Danny Watson and Sen. Jonathan Dismang is now Act 517. Tis act removes the duplicative reporting requirement for a county or municipality receiving a distribution of highway revenue of $2 million or more. Tese bills came from ideas the judges had and issues they have expe- rienced. Most of you know that construction costs have gone through the roof over the last few years, and it’s getting harder and harder to find enough willing contractors to bid jobs in rural Arkansas. Tese bills will help counties eliminate waste- ful cost and allow government to act more quickly. A few of the AAC package bills will help counties plan for the future. Counties plan by projecting revenue, which can sometimes be difficult because you never know when a disaster or another pandemic will come around. SB528, sponsored by Sen. Bill Sample and Rep. Les Warren, is now Act 776. Tis act allows the Department of Finance and Ad- ministration (DFA) to send a report of businesses to counties and cities that are receiving or will receive a tax credit. Tese tax credits are great economic development recruiting tools but sometimes counties are out of the loop and need to plan for the revenue impact. Te reports keep confidential infor- mation intact to protect these businesses. Another bill that will help our counties in the future is HB1860, sponsored by Rep. Lanny Fite and Sen. Gary Stubblefield. Now Act 752, this new law allows counties to appropriate 100 percent of federal assistance dollars. Counties will be able to appropri- ate 100 percent of the American Rescue Plan money they are currently receiving. We are still waiting on an official Attorney General’s opin-
ion regarding when these bills become law. Bills that have emergency clauses go into effect as soon as the Governor signs them, and appropriation bills become law at the begin- ning of the next fiscal year. Our conservative guess for all the other bills to become law will be by the first of August. Tis was an unconventional session to say the least, but your AAC team navigated the strange circumstances in the marble halls of the state Capitol.
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