Well, the deadline to pass bills out of Illinois House committees has come and gone and HB205 was not acted on today by the Illinois House Executive Committee. So where does that leave the measure? According to the Illinois House Rules HB205 has been sent back to the Rules Committee under Rule 19(a).
19. Re‑Referrals to the Rules Committee.
(a) All legislative measures that fail to meet the applicable deadline established under Rule 9 for reporting to the House by a standing committee or a special committee, for Third
Reading and passage, or for consideration of joint action motions and conference committee reports are automatically re‑referred to the Rules Committee unless: (i) the deadline has
been suspended or revised by the Speaker, with re‑referral to the Rules Committee to occur if the bill has not been reported to the House in accordance with a revised deadline; or (ii)
the Rules Committee has issued a written exception to the Clerk with respect to a particular bill before the reporting deadline, with re‑referral to occur, if at all, in accordance with the
written exception. When a bill is re‑referred to the Rules Committee after failure to meet the Third Reading deadline, any floor amendment to the bill remaining in a standing or
special committee shall also be re‑referred to the Rules Committee.
This isn’t great news but it’s not the end of the world either. House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) has extended the deadline on bills in the past and could do so again in this case.
It is also worth noting that HB1988, a “shell bill” that we have been told will eventually be the Anheuser-Busch Bill, has also been sent back to Rules after not passing out of the Executive Committee.
HB205’s counterpart in the Senate, SB88, was passed over for the fourth consecutive time on Thursday in the Senate Executive Committee. That bill has not been amended and still keeps the barrel limit for breweries to self-distribute at 60,000 barrels. In an email to state lawmakers urging them to vote no on the bill the Associated Beer Distributors of Illinois called that number “ridiculous.” But the bill did pick up a second co-sponsor in State Senator Dan Kotowski (D-Park Ridge). That brings the total number of lawmakers who are on record supporting the legislation to three in the Senate and two in the House. Read in to that what you will.
Both the Illinois House and Senate are off all of next week. Maybe that will free up some time for lawmakers and the interested parties to put their heads together and reach a solution on HB205 and SB88.
If you need something to entertain you while you get caught up on this week’s Save The Craft happenings give this week’s Outside the Loop RADIO show a listen. Host Mike Stephen was kind enough to talk with Ryan about the Save The Craft campaign (starts around the 4:00 minute mark).
[audio:https://hw.libsyn.com/p/4/a/7/4a79038ce48966e5/otl-ep234-110317.mp3?sid=35990f7998434d7b1d58344ba669b1f7&l_sid=23477&l_eid=&l_mid=2482932]Give the whole thing a listen and check out the Outside the Loop RADIO website for an archive of past shows. There’s a lot of good stuff there.