RYAN: First, let us start by thanking all of you who have visited the site, reached out to your lawmaker, blogged about this, tweeted it, shared the link on Facebook, or went old school and told somebody sitting next to you. You are the driving force behind this campaign and we thank you. We can give you all sorts of incentive and background information on this issue, but once we do it is in your hands to act on it.
With that in mind we wanted to give you an idea of how Save The Craft will move forward. If there is one thing I learned while covering the Illinois legislature a lot of what happens in Springfield is hurry up and wait. But once things get going they can really get going. Right now it appears we are in that hurry up and wait stage. The multitude of groups that have their hands in this legislation (the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild, The Associated Beer Distributors of Illinois, the Wine and Spirit Distributors of Illinois, MillerCoors and A-B InBev – among others) are still meeting in Springfield. They may be this/close to an agreement on what Senate Bill 88 or House Bill 205 will look like, or they may not. It all depends on who you ask. So instead of putting you on a daily roller coaster of rumor and innuendo we are going to stick to the facts and what we know to be true.
If you don’t see a daily update from us on the Save The Craft campaign it doesn’t mean there isn’t anything happening or that the issue is on the back-burner. Instead, we are working behind the scenes reaching out to lawmakers, staffers, lobbyists, brewers and bloggers to keep this effort in front of the people it should be in front of.
There is a possibility that this won’t be resolved by the March 31st deadline set by the federal judge. And even if it is, with the looming shadow of the Anheuser-Busch Bill, this issue could very easily continue all the way through till the end of the legislative session on May 31st. So hunker down, dig in and fill up your favorite growler. We are in it for the long haul and we hope you will be too.