At the end of May, Illinois state legislators approved the Fiscal Year 2026 budget. Knox County Area Partnership President Ken Springer explains items passed for economic development:
“This year there is going to be a lot of emphasis placed on site readiness. That is the process where communities go out and they take a piece of land and get it ready for development. The state has actually put $200 million into the budget to help communities get sites ready. The other thing that came out of the budget is a new tax credit for manufacturers. This is called the ‘Advancing Innovative Manufacturing Tax Credit,’ or AIM for short. It is open to any manufacturer either that is in the state or somebody that wants to come into the state, based on capital investments that those companies are making. The last thing that I thought was interesting in the budget was the state put some more money into an existing program that the Department of Commerce has been running for rural and locally owned grocery stores. Grocery stores can get up to $50,000 in state support for getting new equipment, new coolers, new freezers, HVAC systems, those kinds of things.”
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed the $55.1 billion budget into law back on June 16th.
