House Agriculture Committee concurs with Senate amendment to H.44, strikes section 5

The House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency & Forestry voted to concur with the Senate amendment to H.44, endorsing draft 2.1 of the amendment that strikes section 5 and makes a small adjustment to the effective date in section 17. The committee recorded a 6-0 tally on the motion to concur.

Representative Burke moved that the committee “concur with the senate proposal of amendment with further proposal of amendment, which is the draft 2.1 of H.44… striking section 5,” and a committee member said, “I’ll second that option.” Committee members conducted a straw poll on the amendment before taking the recorded vote.

The amendment as considered by the committee is identified in the meeting record as draft 2.1 and was described in committee discussion as making two specific changes: removing the language in section 5 and adjusting the effective date language in section 17. A staff participant said she had copied language and sent it to Betsy Ann in the clerk’s office with the note that it was the amendment to H.44 offered by the House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry, referencing a document label that sounded like “drop 00602.”

During the discussion, a committee member noted the bill will be on the floor the next day at 9:30 a.m. and said he believed it would be “at the top of the calendar.” The committee agreed to report the bill and the adopted amendment to the clerk for placement on the House calendar.

The committee’s action was procedural concurrence with the Senate amendment as further amended in draft 2.1; no additional policy changes beyond the described strike of section 5 and the section 17 effective-date adjustment were recorded in the committee minutes.

Next steps: staff were directed to transmit the adopted amendment language to the clerk’s office so the bill and amendment would appear on the House calendar and be available to members prior to the floor session.