abstract: The complement of a central complex arrangement is a fiber bundle over ℂ with fiber F, the Milnor fiber. The fiber can also be realized as the cyclic d-fold covering space of the decone of the arrangement. Several authors have studied the Milnor fiber in this context, finding various restrictions on the possible homology groups. Using local system homology and covering space theory, we will explore conditions on the decone of 3-arrangements that have strong implications on the first betti number of the Milnor fiber as well helping to eliminate the possibility of torsion in the first homology group.