Pest Management Records Modernization Act

Floor Speech

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

I want to thank my friend from Pennsylvania for his remarks and for clearly stating this commonsense piece of legislation and for his support of it.

I, too, would like to thank the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Schrader). He is the author of this piece of legislation. Something we have come to expect from Mr. Schrader is a commonsense, bipartisan piece of legislation.

H.R. 5714, the Pest Management Records Modernization Act, is pro-small business and pro-consumer. It improves the ability of pest management companies to communicate important information with their customers related to the products they use.

As you heard from the gentleman from Pennsylvania, most States require pest management and other applicator companies to provide customers with information related to pest treatments, either automatically or upon request. Most of the requirements are implemented and enforced by State departments of agriculture, which are the State pesticide regulatory agency in 40 States. The required information is typically information directly from the pesticide label. The overwhelming majority of treatments performed by pest management professionals involve general use pesticides.

Right now about 45 States permit electronic conveyance of this information directly to consumers. In fact, in the last 2 years, the States of California, Georgia, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Arizona have recognized the need to update their respective laws related to disclosure and passed legislation or taken administrative actions permitting electronic conveyance of pesticide application information.

Like businesses in countless sectors of the economy, professional pest management and other pest applicator businesses are going paperless as a way to save costs and increase efficiencies. Going paperless allows businesses to back up and better safeguard data and records in case of a fire, flood, or other disasters. It also makes it easier to prove compliance with various recordkeeping, reporting, and related requirements, plus it has the added advantage of being greener and more environmentally sound.

Unfortunately, the transition to a paperless office for many pest management and other pesticide applicator businesses is more difficult than anticipated because of antiquated State consumer information requirements from the 1970s and '80s that mandated transmission of such documents be via hard copies or paper and do not permit electronic conveyance. These requirements are especially disruptive for companies that have made the transition to paperless that operate in multiple States, some of which permit electronic conveyance and others that don't.

It is important to note H.R. 5714 does not put any new mandates on small businesses but, rather, provides them the ability to electronically convey information in the handful of States that have not yet addressed this in a changing e-commerce environment.

As I have said previously, and as my friend from Pennsylvania stated, H.R. 5714 is commonsense, it is bipartisan, it is pro-consumer, and it is pro-small

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business. It deserves our support, and I encourage everyone to make its swift passage possible.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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