Sign Kentucky Banking RFP Now

Industry sign banking kentucky rfp now

the clerk called the call the roll let me say that if you are a committee member uh and you are uh join us you know via the video uh just let us know if you are in your annex office on campus or you know from your district so please call the roll representative blanton here representative bowling representative bridges here representative burch representative cantrell representative dawson representative dotson here representative du plessy here representative flannery here representative fugate here representative johnson here representative kirk mccormick representative representative miles here representative gibbons-prenty here representative scott representative stevenson representative wesley here representative wilner i'm here in my district thank you representative representative white chair gooch here okay we do have a quorum uh members we're glad to have representative bowling back with us and we are so sorry for for your loss and uh you're i served with your dad for many many years and he was a mentor to me and and i know he certainly will be missed and a great great great guy um we're going to take up three bills today the first bill is house bill 392. uh that's my bill i'm probably just going to uh do th this this from the uh from the from the chair if it's okay with everyone uh house bill 392 is uh is the same bill as house bill 403 last year that passed the house 96 to nothing um and uh what it really does it's a bill that i brought for the public service commission i think they are here to on zoom to testify today uh but most of you are aware of the lie heap program uh that's a program that helps uh it's a government program that helps low energy i mean low-income people help pay their utility bills well some of the utilities have uh voluntary programs where people can maybe donate extra or round their bills up or whatever to help pay for someone who um maybe can't pay their bill and all this really does is it sets the same income levels for people to qualify that's in the lockheed program doesn't have any kind of physical impact to the state or anything like that so we have motion second on the bill i think we do have a karen wilson uh here with us and and maybe others uh karen would you like to say anything or or hello um i i don't have anything to add but we are here if anybody has any questions linda bridwell and i okay great thank you glad to have uh the executive director with us today so there's a motion on the on the bill and a second any questions before we vote uh representative scott has joined us and uh are you in your annex office representative i'm president of my annex office yes thank you that's great so we will come to you in the roll call thank you please call the robe oh i'm someone has a oh well um this um has nothing to do with the uh late fees on the water bill no okay no this this bill is strictly um so that if someone uh wants to uh uh give money uh you know they can give money to the their utilities don't they're probably only maybe one utility in the state that really has one of these kind of volunteer programs where people can give a little extra to help pay for someone else all this bill does is um the the amount that you uh um if you know in order to qualify it sets the income level actually would raise the income level to the same level as the lie heap program so it really means that more people would qualify for to get assistance paying their bills so okay thank you is that pretty good karen uh wilson yes you did an excellent job okay thank you please call the roll representative blanton aye representative bowling yes representative bridges representative birch representative cantrell representative dossett yes representative dodson yes representative duplessy yes representative flannery yes representative fugate yes representative johnson representative kirk mccormick yes representative miles yes representative gibbons-parente yes representative scott yes representative stevenson yes representative wesley yes representative white yes chair gooch yes okay the bill does pass with favorable expression thank you uh the next bill that we have is uh house bill 393 um that's also bill that the public service commission has asked for uh this is the same bill that passed the house 93 to one last year just didn't uh you know with the the session ending early didn't have time to pass motion on the bill okay motion in a second uh karen do you want to talk a little bit about this bill maybe karen karen wilson yeah okay thank you um yes it's uh the same as house bill 446 from last year and um the reason we are proposing this legislation is um there are there have been a couple of times when water district commissioners were not able to complete the statutorily required training and in at least one situation if it's a new commissioner um if they cannot complete their training they actually have to forfeit that position uh the statute also provides for an increase in compensation for existing water district commissioners if they complete additional training they have a an increase in their compensation so this bill allows the psc a degree of discretion to allow a water district commissioner up to six more additional months to complete their training it would be you know extenuating circumstances but i think uh some of this training some of this training karen is uh provided by the psc and with the the pandemic last year you weren't able to actually get people together and do some of that so it's definitely something that's needed do we have any questions we have a motion and a second on the bill call the roll please representative blanton aye representative bowling representative bridges representative burch representative cantrell representative dossett yes representative dobson yes representative duplessy yes representative flannery aye representative fugate yes representative johnson representative kirk mccormick yes representative miles yes representative gibbons-brunty yes representative scott yes representative stevenson yes representative wesley yes representative white yes and chair gooch yes the bill passes with favorable expression the same should pass on the floor thank you uh committee members um the next bill that we're gonna hear is uh house bill 535 representative santoro uh please uh introduce uh yourself for the record and your guest and then i think there's some people on um that want to testify yes sir mr chairman um this is a new bill it didn't get covered last year so we're starting all new on this one representative south santora from boone county we have a couple i'll let tom go ahead i'm tom bennett i represent the ecosystem investment partners one of the mitigation companies that's done some work here in kentucky microphone i'm sorry we can't hear you i'm sorry i'm tom bennett i represent the ecosystem investment partners they've done about 50 million dollars worth of stream restoration and 100 miles of streams in kentucky then our we have several on zoom i think if you want them to identify themselves now for the record mr chairman yes please for the members that are on zoom that are going to testify on this bill would you uh go ahead and introduce yourselves go ahead fitz you've done this before mr chairman members of the committee it's tom fitzgerald with the kentucky resources council i'm just here to help answer any questions that you might have about the bill we support the bill at the risk of jeopardizing its passage we think it's a good bill boy okay nick let's go ahead identify yourself good morning uh this i'm nicholas dilks you can call me nick uh i'm managing partner of ecosystem investment partners that tom referenced we are a restoration company that has uh successfully built four stream mitigation banks in kentucky uh and uh are pleased to support the bill and george um yes i'm george howard i'm ceo of a small medium business in raleigh north carolina that's in the mitigation business been in about 25 years we're seeking to do business in kentucky and i'm here to discuss the north carolina fee programs approach contracting for mitigation which has a very similar life history uh to the kentucky burger thank you committee members um a lot of this came to my attention because of several big projects going on in my county in boone county and across the commonwealth so house bill 535 creates hundreds of private sector construction jobs across kentucky and it will restore streams and wetlands this bill is supported by the kentucky chamber of commerce and the kentucky resource council in order for businesses to get permits from the army corps of engineers they must get what's called a 404 permit this takes up to three years or more in some cases the alternative for their these businesses is to pay fees into the kentucky stream and wetlands mitigation fund the fund has a severe backlog that exceeds the federal limits it's time to let the private industry help keep this important program in place tennessee just lost his program for inefficient inefficiencies like this that fund has 148 million dollars which creates hundreds of jobs and help businesses get construction permits i'm gonna let tom take it over from here now we're gonna let nick explain uh what is going on as far as his company in kentucky nick are you good thank you again we appreciate the opportunity to testify hope you all can hear me yes we can okay great again uh my firm ecosystem investment partners first came to kentucky about eight years ago uh to help provide stream and wetland mitigation credits to various development projects um like we just mentioned uh since then we've invested over 50 million dollars we've restored over 100 miles of streams across the state to generate credits that are used by all sorts of various projects including highway projects that the transportation cabinet has used and other major development projects we've shown that private firms like ecosystem about investment partners like restoration systems that mr howard represents can effectively and efficiently deliver projects on the ground in a timely way again to provide the credits that are desperately needed by development while restoring and protecting kentucky's environment because we use private capital to front the work to do this construction work our projects actually produce restoration before the impacts occur so there's no quote temporal loss of those environmental resources it also is a very efficient way again for development projects to simply acquire credits to get their 404 permits all of the firms that we've hired to do our construction design permitting monitoring and maintenance are kentucky based firms we employ dozens and dozens of people to do these projects these are good paying jobs oftentimes in very rural parts of kentucky where jobs are hard to come by in particular jobs that are focused on restoring the environment this bill proposes to assist the kentucky wetlands stream fund to give them the tools to engage the private sector more efficiently to allow firms to deliver large-scale wetland and stream restoration to the benefit of the fund and as the representative said to keep that funded in place it is a good and necessary part of the mitigation program as are the mitigation banks that we develop in various parts of the state because of the backlog in uh no projects being delivered like the eastern part of the state and the big sandy watershed and in northern kentucky and kenton county in lieu fee credits are now not available because they're either sold out due to lack of projects being on the ground or inability to deliver firms like ours and george howard and others are ready and willing to invest capital to address this backlog and to avoid the issue that happened in tennessee where the program was shut down due to lack of performance so there's a great opportunity here for a real win-win which is to get jobs back on the ground good construction jobs on the ground help the luffy perform as they're obligated to do um under the federal laws and and to make sure that we rectify this this is really about a win-win for economic development job creation in a very difficult time in particular in rural parts of kentucky while meeting these important environmental obligations so we appreciate the opportunity and again support this and welcome any questions george you're up um thank you mr chairman and committee my name is george howard i'm from raleigh north carolina and i own a regional mitigation banking company restoration systems wishing to do business and hire people in kentucky i've come to support and answer questions about the full delivery approach to state mitigation procurement that north carolina has used since 2003 to operate our mitigation fee program now called the north carolina division of mitigation services the ncdms through the full delivery approach is the most successful mitigation fee program in the country the program has spent nearly 800 million dollars on 400 different uh full delivery mitigation sites throughout the state with zero contract failures our company is proud to be responsible for over 50 of those mitigation sites in the 20 years we have been building and fulfilling full delivery contracts we have hired hundreds of land people real estate lawyers engineers stream designers contractors equipment operators tree planters and monitoring personnel and that is an abbreviated list it is a mitigation power goes a long way like the kentucky program the original feed program struggled to meet its obligations in the early days as reported in our state capitals newspaper 58 million dollars have built up and only 10 acres of wetland restored and no stream when the state went to the full delivery approach all the outstanding needs were met within just four years more than 500 miles of stream have since been contracted and over 40 000 acres of wetland restored it wasn't easy getting there but we did our full delivery rfp has survived and improved over the last two decades everyone in north carolina that follows this obscure subject are big fans of the program and its accomplishments the dms program itself the mitigation providers the business community our state legislators the state and federal regulators and yes even the environmentalists fully and enthusiastically support the full delivery approach and are proud of its accomplishments it takes like a clock in north carolina and every place it has been used we highly recommend the approach to kentucky and look forward to answering questions thank you very much that is our testimony mr chairman okay thank you how much money are we currently looking at i think you may have mentioned that earlier that you have already there is in in the fund currently is 148 million dollars 148 million dollars that would be projected to be spent in what time frame well i think george told you that when they've had a backlog in north carolina it took them four years to work out of it the current concern is is that the projects in kentucky the way that they're being administered now is like we do in the state highway road plan the six-year road plan we design programs we bid programs and we build programs and that's the six-year road plan unfortunately section 404 of the federal clean water act and the 2008 guidance from the corps of engineers and epa says that you have to do this work within three years and that's the challenge going through state processes normal state processes you're probably looking at three years to start with in in normal fashion private industry on the other hand can hire people tomorrow we can sit down at a local restaurant and negotiate the price of land and it goes much quicker and this is really about what this this whole job is about this whole discussion is about jobs it's creating it's it's that pot of money that's sitting there that could be hiring people could be spending money in local economies could be restoring the environment which fits everybody's mission the mission of i have questions okay um we have a motion and a second on the bill but that we uh that we do have some members that have some questions uh representing mccormack do you have some questions i do i think uh representative white has some too um richard you want to o first what's the department of fish and wildlife resources had to say about this turn your mic on rich pull it over to you or something yes what's the department of fish and wildlife resources uh what's their position on this well it's been a long time since i was able to officially speak for them but this is in in our opinion they should be for this because this is another tool in their toolbox to get the money spent and and to complete the reclamation of land when we started this program 20 years ago we knew that we would be dealing with 700 800 900 acre chunks of land thousand acre chunks of land with miles and miles of streams you can't believe how many miles of streams are in a thousand acres of kentucky watershed and the faster we restore those streams it seems that that fits perfectly in the mission of the department of fish and wildlife resources to restore and enhance kentucky's wildlife and the natural resources well as the program is now private uh entities can can do this this job and what you're proposing is that going to take it away from these private entities oh no the private industries would would be enhanced there would be more private sector jobs created hundreds of private sector jobs could be created as george and nick may be able to answer more specific questions when he talks about individual jobs i can see but is this going to cut out the little man locally in her region if they wanted to bid on these jobs or if this bill passes will it only be large companies that's going to get the contract and then they're going to hire local people to do the work an answer for the way it played out in north carolina it ended up being a mix of a couple of companies from out of state with the majority in state and in fact a lot of engineering firms that previously had just in engineering and design of streams and and and work like that they ended up uh getting into the full delivery business and actually working to acquire the land and take care of the site long term and build it and it's going to be a local job creator from top to bottom some of the finance and risk may be taken by the larger companies at first but like i said we're still a small business uh you know we work in about six or seven states but it's not big money and we can't do it without the local people it's an absolutely local job from finding the land to purchasing the land to uh any kind of design has to be done locally because you have to be out there very frequently to do it so it's a sticky sticky job creator but yeah folks from out of state at first are certainly going to be involved did that answer your questions not entirely maybe i could try to this may get a little technical um but the notion is that currently the state works through what's called a design bid build program which does involve local firms it does involve some out-of-state firms as well to design and then bid and then build these projects the problem is that that program just takes a very long time it's very iterative in process and doesn't allow for private capital to come in which is what we bring outside of the state to go and accelerate that work under a turnkey or full delivery program like it's being proposed it allows firms to uh with a contract go ahead and spend private capital to go ahead and put those jobs on the ground immediately with the promise that they ultimately will be able to sell the project to the inlu fee later and so the big difference is it brings all of that job uh workforce forward versus spreading it out over the next three five ten years um and we absolutely so far have used all local firms but what firms like we do is we bring the outside capital so that we can accelerate that work and get the jobs on the ground now yeah i think it's important to note um i know nick would agree that we we don't profit on these jobs originally we invest in them the profits these jobs extend um i believe in kentucky would it be five or seven years nick but they go out a long long time they're paid incrementally over years and any profit we make is all at risk to the last year so we're investing for four or five years to get through a a a long multi-year program and get it on the ground now so not only the money in the feed program that's built up but our capital would come first and then be paid back with that that's what it accelerates uh let me put it let me put it to you this way uh you would be the contractor on these jobs and then primarily you will sub them out or either hire local people to do the work is that correct okay completely we don't have any designers in our firm nor any construction equipment or any of that we operate we locate the the sites and we'll do some of the negotiating with local people generally we have local landmen and um and then we'll perform it with with with local people all of our people are experts in the disciplines that they manage but they do not perform the work so we would have managers you know we've only got uh 17 people in raleigh but if we had three or four mitigation sites up there we'd have about 20 or 30 people working locally to implement them this would be competitively bid so firms like ours and like restoration systems would be uh contracted with but it would be available to all firms both in in state and out of state to competitively bid and bring projects forth that the state could then choose to accept or not it really just allows um you know creativity and private sector to bring opportunities to the table where right now there really is no mechanism for for folks to bring opportunities to the luffy represent you have another question um i was my whole goal for coming to frankfort was uh to protect and create jobs for people in eastern kentucky in my district and we've been hit hard by the coal industry so i just wanted to make sure that the opportunity if if those waterways in our uh area became available that people would have an opportunity for employment so thank you that comment yes certainly mccormick what this is going to do is put coal miners back to work yeah that's what you want in it yeah a good i do but we we've had some questions uh that's good constituents that felt like this might uh prevent some of the local people from bidding on the contract well if i may in north carolina the bids are very very frequent it's a very liquid market it's not like a state uh computer services contract where you're going to go out and get one firm to do it we've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of rfps in north carolina and anybody's willing to participate and market participants come in and out of it depending on whether you know they thought it was in you know an opportunity to do business it's a very very fluid market with dozens and dozens of opportunities for people to win or lose because it's competitive thank you we're just wanting some clarification so that we can answer to our constituents so let me ask the question uh so that you know if when when you're looking at locating a project or whatever and then you determine what needs to be done is do any any of the local contractors then are they able to view that that there's there's there's an actual rfp out there where they can uh you know bid on that particular this is all done through the finance cabinet do the finances yes sir okay yes sir everything and competitively bid through the finance cabinet okay okay uh representative wesley you have a question okay yeah that that summed it up right there okay and i want to say also i want to thank representative saltoro for bringing this bill forth jefferson bowling did you have a question just a brief comment um i appreciate you bringing this bill this is a win-win-win for folks all across kentucky on all different sides of this issue and you know right now just looking at this graph i mean we're spending 4.6 million dollars a year um on these projects right now and there is 148 million dollars in that pot and so talk about bringing jobs and making sure those local contractors represented mccormick it's going to make sure that money gets out there gets in our district gets spent fixes the streams but they're going to those local contractors they're going to benefit greatly from this whether they get the big contracts at the top end or whether they are contracted out to do some of the small work there's going to be a lot more money out there for anybody in this field okay any any other questions i have yes representative white uh in my opinion it would be better to cut the red tape out for these small contractors where they can go ahead and get into the job and get the work done because i would think having you all involved in this uh situation would have to add extra cost to this uh to this you know i so the history of our involvement in kentucky actually came about because two firms won a design firm in lexington and uh tom stream restoration systems is based in uh pikesville i believe came to us because they were trying to do work for the inland feed program but couldn't get through that process and so they said eip could you come and basically provide us the capital so that we can build projects to satisfy mitigation needs and that's that's what we've done so all of the work we've done to date that i described earlier has used only kentucky contractors and i think if they were here today what they would say is that the involvement of firms like us and george's really allows them to move forward more expeditiously more efficiently and actually drive down the cost we sell our credits at a price that's below what the loot fee charges uh because of the efficiencies that we can bring in in not having delay and so forth so it may seem a little counterintuitive but the experience has been that by allowing these types of full delivery projects you actually allow those local contractors to have a more efficient um source of capital and a way to get the projects going if we will okay thank you sir well i know that what is it about 15 years ago kentucky we had a a secretary of natural resources uh environment that actually wanted us to take over the 404 water permit things that didn't happen at the time and we're not here to argue about whether or not we should have or shouldn't have but you know much of those uh types of things are completely out of our control because they're handled in washington so okay you have a question no okay we have a motion on the bill uh and a second please call the roll representative blanton explain my vote briefly mr chairman certainly because of the respect of the opinion of mr tom fitzgerald i know this is good for our environment and for our streams uh and therefore i vote i today tom representative bowling yes representative bridges representative burch representative cantrell representative dossett yes representative dotson yes representative duplessy yes representative flannery oh yes i'd like to explain my vote sergeant chairman briefly um appreciate representative santoro for bringing this mr bennett thank you for being here today i i believe this bill has a potent has a potential to have a very positive impact in my district particularly in lawrence county and i look forward to moving moving this bill forward and learning more about what you all have to offer thank you all representative fugate yes representative johnson yes and if it's in order i'd like to record yes votes on the previous bills as well i'll come back to you for that thank you sir representative kirk mccormick can i vote conditionally i don't think that's one of the options yes thank you representative miles yes representative gibbons prunty yes representative scott representative uh stevenson yes representative wesley yes representative white uh let me can i explain my vote yes uh i told tom on the phone you know i would be behind this and i did uh but since that time talk and i was elected to represent my constituents uh i've had some calls about this bill and i'm gonna have to vote no but it's it's passed so uh i don't think that would affect it thank you though chair gooch yes okay the bill does pass with favorable expression that same should pass thank you all thank you thank you all very much tom when i have another bill i'll be calling you then mr chairman i appreciate the opportunity to have testified today i hope it didn't talk too long yeah you were just right on the spot thank you uh at this time uh representative johnson wants to record uh yes votes is that correct thank you mr chairman that is correct on 392 392 and 393. noted and recorded um