2-28 House Committee amended to appropriations

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2-28 House Committee amended to appropriations Page 5 of 22 Rep. PelllY Thank you Madame Chair. On Page 4, Line 26 is amendment LO 14, which is a reference to a later piece of the bill which this makes pali of the Director of Compacts Negotiation's job description. Making sure that the Charter, which we will talk about in a subsequent part of the bill is completed in a timely fashion. Madame Chair: Okay, moving on then to Page 5. Rep. PelllY On Page 5, Line 15, L007 reaffirms the voluntary nature of this process in saying that roundtables point in time they feel like there's nothing in it for them, they can opt out of the negotiation process. Madame Chair: Okay, L009 would be the next one down then. Rep. PelllY Thank you, Madame Chair. Page 5, Line 19, L009, you'll remember in the testimony phase of the journey a couple of weeks ago there were some questions about how this process integrated with SWSI, specifically questions raised by the Chairmen. What we try to do in this language is tell the Director to make sure and take such steps as are necessary to make sure that there's not overlap or duplication between the SWSI process and this new Interbasin compact negotiation process. As we've described it to other people, really people have asked what the interplay is. The interplay is that SWSI will be the empirical arm, provide sort of baseline data, which this process will use in during the compact negotiation phase. But just to make sure that there is no overlap between the two, we direct the Executive Director of the Depaliment of Natural Resources to take such action as is necessary to make sure there's no overlap. The second sentence beginning on Line 23 says that the roundtables established in this process, if the Executive Director of DNR so chooses, can be used as the roundtables for SWSI. One of the things that we've heard in this process is not all communities feel like the SWSI roundtables are as representative as they should be. And we've tried, and later in this bill you'll see a new balance we've stmck for the roundtables. And if it works in this context, I think the theory is that it would work well for them to also be involved in the SWSI process as well. Madame Chair: Before we move on, just heads up for the Committee, the project bill, I think passed the Senate floor, not sure of the status on that. But we'll get that soon, and then the CWCB projects feel they'll be www.escriptionist.com Page 5 of 22