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Economy

Illinois Will Resume Tourism Support

WVIK Staff - file photo

Tourism promotion in the Quad Cities and across Illinois will resume early next year. This week, the governor signed a compromise funding bill from the General Assembly that will allow the state to start sending out grants to groups like the Quad Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau.

President and ceo, Joe Taylor, says the bureau usually receives about 18,000 dollars a month from the state, or 220,000 dollars per year. But those payments stopped in July when the long, budget impasse began. 
Once the paper work is done, Taylor says local tourism bureaus should start receiving their state grants in January.

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We can resume going to trade shows, doing advertising, and hosting media visits.

Despite the long state funding cut-off, the Quad Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau did not layoff any employees. 

He says state tourism grants in Illinois are funded by hotel-motel taxes, and not by taxes on state residents.

A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois.