Substitute SB 6448 Referred to Senate Ways & Means

As reported in yesterday's post here, the Senate Natural Resources, Ocean & Recreation Committee recommended that a substitute version of SB 6448 (see posts here, here, and here on the original bill) be passed and referred to Ways & Means. This has now been done.

The substitute bill appears much as described in the Senate Bill Report discussed in yesterday's post linked above. The full text of the substitute is now available at the link here as well as at a link in the "Legislative Alerts" section of the right-hand sidebar of this page.

Although mining projects authorized under the Gold & Fish pamphlet would not (for now) require a fee, the minimum proposed fees for mineral prospecting activities not covered by the pamphlet would be $250 (application submittal fee) + $275 (permit processing fee) = $525. (See pages 14 and 15 of the bill text for details.)

In my opinion this is still a bad bill for the miners and, if passed, poised to become a worse one in future incarnations.