KJ Johnson has been actively representing IFCA at the state capitol this spring.  As the session winds down with possible adjournment this weekend, most of the discussion has been centered around the state budget and the debate over making the temporary income and corporate tax increase permanent.  At this point, it appears that a vote on the tax issue will be delayed until the fall Veto session.  The state budget includes $1 billion in spending for roads and bridges.  

 

With regard to issues that directly impact IFCA members, IFCA had a successful year at the Captiol.  We helped to assure that legislation on labeling GMO food products in Illinois did not come to a vote, and we also stopped legislation that would apply fees to Tier 2 chemical inventory reports. IFCA also lent support to legislation sought by IDA to clean up areas in the Pesticide Act to help in the licensing process and remove old language pertaining to the agrichemical incident facility response fund.  That fund once housed the $500 agrichemical permit facility application fees back from the 1990's, but it was swept several years ago leaving the program in name only.  There had not been a request for an incident response reimbursement for many years, and since the fee is not re-occuring, IFCA supported eliminating the statuatory language surrounding this program and the board that was put in place to administer the program. This program served a purpose in the 1990's but with fund sweeps now the norm, it was not feasible to continue to operate a program that the industry was no longer utilizing, and certainly no support for any new fees to be deposited into a fund that could be swept.