From the Executive Director – Week of February 5, 2024

I want to thank everyone for attending IAC’s Midwinter Legislative Conference. While there wasn’t a lot of activity at the Capitol, there was plenty to discuss with your legislators. I hope each of you had the opportunity to meet with your legislators while you were in town to discuss the legislative issues most important to your county. As the session progresses, it will also be important for you to find ways to remain in contact with your legislators to ensure they understand where you stand on the issues they will be voting on.

Now that the first four weeks of the session are in the rearview mirror, I anticipate things will pick up this week as the deadline to introduce bills in nonprivileged committees is Friday, February 9th. Once bills are introduced, committees will have more frequent hearings and there will be more votes on the House and Senate floors. IAC hopes to introduce bills related to the nonprofit hospital property tax exemption and e911 fees this week, so stay tuned.

Another item to keep an eye on this week is the budget setting process in JFAC. The legislature is still navigating the formal process of adopting appropriations bills, and disagreements over the process are starting to go public. For example, on Friday, twelve members of JFAC introduced appropriation bills to compete with the “maintenance” appropriation. Because the bills are not compatible with each other, both cannot pass. 

IAC also anticipates the “Christmas tree” tax relief bill to be introduced later this week. While the contents of the bill have not been released, it will include needed fixes to House Bill 292 to allow for a more streamlined administrative process in calculating Homeowner Tax Relief (HTR) as well as funding for the state to take over juvenile and child protection proceedings. IAC will release a full analysis of the bill once it is released to the public. Until then, keep checking the IAC Bill Tracker to stay up to date on the latest legislative developments.