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[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Alright. Welcome back to the House Environment Committee. We actually have a topic we wanna discuss publicly that came up immediately upon our adjournment. So we're gonna come back to live and hear from Rob North.
[Rob North (Member)]: Yeah. Okay. Thank thank you, madam chair, for giving me an opportunity to express some some thoughts about the the bottle bill that we passed yesterday. One of the main concerns that we heard about it, and I know I voted for it yesterday, because I think, although I think the best solution was to eliminate it, the second best solution was to really approve it. This is a path forward. One of the things I think we neglected, though, to include, and it somehow didn't dawn on me until the middle of the night, last night, is we kept hearing from the redemption centers that they can't, they just are hanging on by their fingernails at 3 and a half cents. We kept trying to find a floor or some way to encourage them, and it didn't lay dawn on me until later that the paragraph that's in there that increases down and co mingled handling fee from $04 to $05 is a temporary solution until the PRO goes into place. So it's about two years. Think this is like April 28 is when the PRO goes into place. Or that's when the ANR is required. It occurred to me, why don't we just give them the full penny that they're asking for, because that 4¢ to 5¢ for the non commingled only addresses 16% of this. Why don't we just address the other 84% with increasing that handling fee from 3.5¢ to 4.5¢? Again, just for that two year period, so that we're supporting our existing redemptions and maybe even allow them to grow a little bit in preparation for a coming PRO so that when the PRO comes there'll be more
[Unidentified Member]: of them to work with.
[Rob North (Member)]: Rather than just for two more years they're hanging on by their fingernails at three and a half, it depends on them disappearing, more reduction deserts, etc. That thought occurred to me. So I just wanted to bring that out, and I so I started apologizing for not having thought of that while we were looking at that paragraph yesterday before we voted. I apologize. It just didn't occur to me until last night, I realized we've already passed it now, but maybe we can get that tiny amendment in there before it actually The Senate. Before. Senate. Or maybe the Senate could do it. I mean, I just wanted to run that by
[Unidentified Member]: you all. You can bring that to the Senate.
[Rob North (Member)]: It could. Yeah.
[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: But Lou could.
[Rob North (Member)]: Oh, right. Right. I mean, could
[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Well, and my response was that's that's fine, but we also have a kind of a balancing, a negotiated deal here among three parties, including us, and that
[Rob North (Member)]: and I I don't know how much, you know, we're allowed to talk about those other parties. I did go and get some information from one of those other parties, I guess that's all my legs say, that that they would probably be okay with that. Whereas I had not asked that before.
[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Okay, and one of the parties is in the room, but go ahead, reference.
[Unidentified Member]: Yeah, was just a little confused. I was a little confused during that discussion, but I thought Mike and Matt Chapin said the penny was
[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: It's added for the non coningual. Okay, non coningual.
[Rob North (Member)]: So, which is 60% of all bottles came
[Unidentified Member]: from the
[Rob North (Member)]: other 86% is about 3 and a half cents. Gotcha.
[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So and this bill now has a number. If you got, just let me know. It's H nine one five. So it's no longer a committee bill. It has its own identity.
[Rob North (Member)]: So I don't know if you all like that idea or not like that idea. I just thought I would just
[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Well, we have time. The bill has to go to the money committees. How about we folks want to respond right now, that's fine, or we can cogitate and have another discussion about it.
[Unidentified Member]: Would we hear testimony about it?
[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yes, I guess we would have to.
[Rob North (Member)]: I mean, in a sense, we kind of already have donors, again, just kind of people that came, so under dependent is huge for them. Certainly, I could hear more. Yeah. Thank you for giving me the update. Just thought about it, hadn't thought about it before.
[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Okay, thanks. With that, we will adjourn for launch today. And before I do that, because the agenda is changing a little bit, updating, we'll have Michael O'Brady in this afternoon at 02:00 possibly to walk us through H-one 152, but also to walk us through the chloride bill which the Senate had sent us.