Rep. DeAnn Vaught Protects Farmers, Improves School Counseling

Rural Arkansas has benefitted tremendously this last session due to Rep. DeAnn Vaught (Dist. 4) of Horatio. Specifically, our farming communities are now better served as laws recently passed protect their property rights and ability to earn a living. Many other issues were on her radar this session to include school counseling and firearm preservation bills. 

​​Farmers can rest easy after the passage of  Act 518  which creates civil immunity for Farmers in certain circumstances. Prior to this law, if a person illegally enters onto a farmer’s property to steal farm equipment and is accidentally injured or killed on that property, the farmer may in many cases could be held legally responsible.

 As crazy as that sounds, this was a gaping hole in Arkansas law that Rep. Vaught sought to fix. Under the new law, a farmer is protected against civil liability cases that can arise from these circumstances. 

Farmers often receive complaints and lawsuits simply for conducting their daily work. This is largely due to new neighbors not familiar with the everyday operation of a farm. New homeowners locating near a farm may consider the smell or noise a nuisance because they were never made aware of them prior to purchasing a property. Rep. Vaught worked on a bill with Sen. Pitsch that satisfies the farmer, real estate agents, and potential property owners by requiring a written disclosure of these potential points of conflict between all parties involved. 

​Rep. Vaught also worked closely with Governor Hutchinson and Sen. Breanne Davis to pass Act 190: “The School Counseling Improvement Act of 2019.” This legislation brings a renewed focus to planned goal-setting and post-secondary opportunities, behavioral and mental health counseling, and much more for our students. This bill alone is a transformative measure that dramatically improves counseling services in schools across our state. 
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On the Second Amendment front, Rep. Vaught passed a wildly popular firearm preservation bill that allows law enforcement agencies to trade confiscated firearms with federally licensed firearm dealers for credit toward their future agency purchases. This is a smart way to help fund our agencies at no cost to the taxpayer while not destroying firearms that hold significant value that would otherwise be wasted by their destruction.