Arizona Laws 3-127. Agricultural workforce development program; rules; apprentices; costs; annual report; definitions
A. The university of Arizona cooperative extension office shall establish the agricultural workforce development program to provide incentives to food-producing agricultural organizations to hire apprentices by partially reimbursing apprenticeship costs.
Terms Used In Arizona Laws 3-127
- Appropriation: The provision of funds, through an annual appropriations act or a permanent law, for federal agencies to make payments out of the Treasury for specified purposes. The formal federal spending process consists of two sequential steps: authorization
- Fiscal year: The fiscal year is the accounting period for the government. For the federal government, this begins on October 1 and ends on September 30. The fiscal year is designated by the calendar year in which it ends; for example, fiscal year 2006 begins on October 1, 2005 and ends on September 30, 2006.
- including: means not limited to and is not a term of exclusion. See Arizona Laws 1-215
- Process: means a citation, writ or summons issued in the course of judicial proceedings. See Arizona Laws 1-215
- United States: includes the District of Columbia and the territories. See Arizona Laws 1-215
B. The director of the university of Arizona cooperative extension office shall adopt rules to carry out this section. At a minimum, the rules shall do all of the following:
1. Establish qualifications for food-producing agricultural organizations to participate in the program, including need and the ability to effectively supervise apprentices and provide the apprentices with meaningful work experience that is focused on agricultural food production.
2. Provide a preference for food-producing agricultural organizations owned or operated by farmers and ranchers who are located in rural or tribal areas or who are historically underserved.
3. Require participating food-producing agricultural organizations to pay apprentices an hourly wage rate that is at least the minimum wage established by this state pursuant to section 23-363.
4. Establish criteria for participating food-producing agricultural organizations to select qualified apprentices, including required educational experience and the ability to perform meaningful work.
5. Establish the process and time frame for selecting qualified food-producing agricultural organizations and qualified apprentices.
6. Establish accounting requirements for tracking apprenticeship costs.
7. Establish the process for participating food-producing agricultural organizations to seek reimbursement.
8. Seek input from community stakeholders to establish and administer the program.
C. Subject to legislative appropriation, the cooperative extension office may reimburse a participating food-producing agricultural organization up to the amount of the actual cost to the food-producing agricultural organization to employ an apprentice. Based on the annual legislative appropriation for the program, the director shall determine the number of apprenticeships to approve, the amount of reimbursement per apprenticeship and whether a participating food-producing agricultural organization may be reimbursed for more than one apprenticeship in the same fiscal year.
D. The cooperative extension office may use up to ten percent of the monies appropriated for the program for the administrative costs of this section.
E. On or before December 1 each year, the cooperative extension office shall submit a report regarding the effectiveness of the program in achieving the program’s purpose to the governor, the president of the senate and the speaker of the house of representatives and provide a copy of this report to the secretary of state.
F. For the purposes of this section:
1. "Actual cost" means the wages paid to an apprentice, a reasonable allocation of fixed overhead expenses and all incidental costs directly related to the apprenticeship.
2. "Agricultural organization" means a business, nonprofit organization, community college or state university program related to agriculture.
3. "Historically underserved":
(a) Means a beginning farmer or rancher, a socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher or a veteran farmer or rancher as defined in 7 United States Code § 2279.
(b) Includes other limited-resource farmers or ranchers.