By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — The House approved a bill Friday that would give the state authority to monitor the finances of education service cooperatives and place troubled cooperatives on fiscal distress status, as it does now with troubled school districts.

Also Friday, a House committee endorsed a bill to place restrictions on loans advanced in anticipation of tax refunds. The Senate did not meet.

In a 69-20 vote, the House approved House Bill 1606 by Rep. Rick Saunders, D-Hot Springs. The bill would allow the state to place an education service cooperative on fiscal distress in certain circumstances, such as the cooperative’s funds being insufficient to cover payroll.

The state Department of Education would make the determination, pending approval by the state Board of Education. If a cooperative failed to get out of fiscal distress within two years, the state would remove and replace its administrators.

The bill also would require cooperatives to report the salaries of all employees to the Department of Education, a practice that the 15 cooperatives in the state already follow, Saunders said.

“It writes (into law) fiscal accountability for cooperatives, education service cooperatives, in the same manner that we have for public schools,” he said.

The bill goes to the Senate.

The House voted 98-0 to approve HB 1378 by Rep. Allen Maxwell, D-Monticello, which would create a low-income tax credit for a head of household who earns $21,300 or less annually and has two or more dependents.

Maxwell said the Legislature passed tax-relief bills in 1997 and 2007 that inadvertently excluded heads of households with more than one dependent.

“It was a mistake, an error. It was everybody’s fault, but it was nobody’s fault,” he said.

HB 1951 by Rep. Beverly Pyle, R-Cedarville, passed the House in a 90-6 vote. The bill would restructure the state Board of Massage Therapy and set new requirements and fees for massage therapists.

Pyle said she and other House members studied the board and “found many problems, beginning with the way the board treats the massage therapists.”

In a 92-2 vote, the House approved HB 1859 by Rep. Bill Abernathy, D-Mena.

Under the bill, all records, hearings, meetings and deliberations of the state Professional Licensure Standards Board, the body created by the Legislature in 2007 to develop and enforce standards for teachers, would be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, except for disciplinary hearings.

In an 87-6 vote, House members approved HB 1172 by Rep. Rick Green, R-Van Buren, which would provide an income tax credit to any business with 50 or fewer employees that purchases and puts in place a cigarette receptacle. The tax credit would be equal to 20 percent of the receptacle’s purchase price.

Green said the Arkansas Clean Indoor Air Act of 2006 led to the unintended consequence of discarded cigarette butts accumulating outside businesses.

Elsewhere Friday, the House Insurance and Commerce Committee endorsed HB 2203 by Rep. Darrin Williams, D-Little Rock, which would require companies that offer cash advances against a consumer’s anticipated tax return to disclose to the consumer all fees that apply and state that the advance is really a short-term loan.

The bill also would ban some practices, such as requiring a consumer to enter into a loan agreement in order to have his or her tax return prepared.

Williams said Thursday that tax preparer H&R Block had concerns about the bill, but on Friday he said the company had decided to support the measure. No one spoke against the bill, which now advances to the full House.