State Legislature

Agriculture scores legislative victories

Indiana Farm Bureau’s director of state government relations Katrina Hall says agriculture should be happy with the outcome of this year’s legislative session.  She says IFB had four legislative priorities this year – the highest was farmland tax relief.  “While bills won’t go down necessarily, the measure that was passed will stop the bleeding,” she says.  “The value that farmers are paying on this year won’t change.”

Hall tells Brownfield farmers across the state have been subject to forced annexation and agriculture was successful in getting the courts removed from the involuntary annexation process. But, she says, there were other challenges in that bill.  “There was an economic development loophole that was proposed by the cities and towns which would basically allow the cities to say ‘if we need your land for an economic development project’ that would negate the elimination of the court,” she says.

And the effective date of that language has been postponed for 18 months.

While not everyone is happy with the bill’s outcome – she says Indiana Farm Bureau is content with the compromises that were made.

Hall says another success for the legislative session was the state budget.  “We were concerned about the funding levels for the state board of animal health,” she says.  “After a lot of pushing on that and lobbying – we were able to get an additional an extra $500,000 in each year of the biennium for the state Board of Animal Health in the regular budget.”

Hall says the debate on some of the agriculture bills came down to the wire – with all of the major priorities passing in the last 30 minutes of the session.