Legislative Update -- January 23, 2020
January 23, 2020
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The morning immediately following our most recent weekly Legislative Update on 1/16/2020, legislation was introduced in the Illinois General Assembly, House Bill 4135, to enable library district boards to collect 1% tax on recreational cannabis sales from dispensaries located in their districts; you may have seen recent communications or articles about this over the past week. The bill sponsor, Representative Dan Didech, has been in touch with ILA's legislative consultant, and ILA Executive Director Diane Foote participated in a conference call this past Tuesday with the Representative and public library district directors in his legislative district. We're working with the systems and the State Library to solicit their feedback, and the ILA Quick Response Team met online today to formulate an initial position. ILA supports efforts to enable libraries in Illinois to realize additive revenue sources, and supports this potential legislation as an option for districts to pursue, dependent on each community's needs and wishes as determined by individual district boards. We are continuing to work with the sponsor and will continue to have discussions about possibilities in upcoming ILA Public Policy Committee and ILA Executive Board meetings.
There are thousands of new bills filed each year by members of the Illinois General Assembly, and only a small fraction of them make it through the legislative process. Routinely, proposals are amended in both chambers before considered in final form.
As of today, there are no bills pending before any standing Illinois House of Representatives committee. Bills that were introduced in 2019, during the first year of the 101st General Assembly, also need to follow the committee process anew in 2020 but do not need to be reintroduced. This means we are likely months away from any new bill, including House Bill 4135, from being considered in the final step of the legislative process.
Between now and then, ILA works regularly with sponsors of bills that we either support, have worked with them to introduce, or oppose. A list of the ones we are focusing on, determined via discussion in the Public Policy Committee and the Executive Board and approved by the Executive Board, is available in the "Legislative Issues" section of the ILA website.
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