REMAIN UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LATEST LEGISLATIVE HAPPENINGS

Lindsay Mitchell

Apr 18, 2013  |  Today's News

If you are a member of the Illinois Corn Growers Association, and let’s hope that you are, you probably expect a certain amount of legislative work and representation in Washington, DC and Springfield, IL from your association. And you should. And now we’re making staying current on legislative happenings that much easier.

The IL Corn website ( www.ilcorn.org ) has a lot of interesting things, but a new feature located right on the homepage will help you weed through that vast amount of legislative news to what’s really important for you, a farmer and a corn grower.

The Legislation and Regulation section, just under the moving picture on the homepage, is now being updated much more often, giving you a week-by-week glance of the happenings in Springfield and Washington. These updates are courtesy of Gov Plus Capitol Consulting and DC Legislative and Regulatory Services who are in Springfield and Washington respectively, and give you a quick glance of the mood and the action within your bodies of government during the week.

Right now, we are featuring these updates:

STATE LEGISLATIVE UPDATE: Last week saw both the Illinois House and Senate marching toward their deadlines in approving bills that originated in their respective chambers--the House deadline is this week--Friday April 19. The Senate deadline is Thursday, April 25. If bills are not passed by those dates, they will need extensions of the deadline to continue their legislative journey. Last week's action did not include the big ticket items regarding pension reform, the 2014 budget, gaming expansion and gun control/concealed carry.It appears those items will somehow be joined in the last days of the session as big issues are generally leveraged to gain enough votes for passage. One important agricultural issue--control of nitrogen use and its effects on water runoff--surfaced again in legislation proposed by Representative Michael Tryon (R-Crystal Lake). (April 15, 2013)

NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE UPDATE: The bipartisan Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), S. 601, may be on the Senate floor later this week. We urge both Senators from Illinois to support the bill and hope that before it is finally passed that it includes provisions from the River Act, S. 407, introduced by Senator Casey (D-PA). Illinois Corn also supports a similar House version, called WAVE 4, H.R. 1149 which we hope will be included in a WRDA bill that we expected to be considered in the House this Spring. (April 8, 2013)

But you can expect those to change soon because on Monday, there will be new information to report, new legislators to pay attention to, and new bills moving locally and nationally.

Check in often to this new section of the website to be sure that you have the most relevant and up-to-date legislative information!