State lawmakers have finalized a one-word adjustment to the Kankakee and Yellow River development commission’s funding process. On Wednesday, Governor Eric Holcomb signed into law a measure that clarifies what steps the state auditor should take if member counties fail to make their required payments.
The bill’s author, Senator Rick Niemeyer, told the senate back in January that it simply cleans up some of the language from last year’s bill that replaced the 24-member Kankakee River Basin Commission with a smaller “Kankakee River Basin and Yellow River Basin Development Commission.”
“When a county fails to pay the direct support or the special assessment, it’s automatically deducted from the income tax distribution,” Niemeyer explained. “The state auditor came to me and said we needed a change. We had ‘payable [to the county]’ in there, and that meant that it could come off the county’s portion plus maybe cities and towns, also. We changed it to ‘allocated.’ It means it comes out of the county’s portion only.”
At the time, Niemeyer also said that the restructured commission was off to a great start.
