Fairfield chamber reschedules legislative forum for Saturday

FAIRFIELD — The Fairfield Area Chamber of Commerce has rescheduled its first legislative forum of the year for this Saturday, Jan. 29.

The forum was originally scheduled for Jan. 15, but had to be delayed because of a snowstorm. The event will be from 7:30-9 a.m. at the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center, a new location. Previous legislative forums were held at Fairfield Best Western.

The chamber invited the four state legislators who represent portions of Jefferson County to give an update on what they’re working on at the Capitol, and to answer questions from the public. Two of them have confirmed they will attend, Rep. Jeff Shipley (R-Birmingham) and Rep. Joe Mitchell (R-Mt. Pleasant). The chamber’s director of program operations, Danielle Briggs, said she’s hopeful Sen. Adrian Dickey (R-Packwood) and Sen. Jeff Reichman (R-Mt. Pleasant) will be able to attend as well. Dickey had a conflict with the previous forum date, and announced he would not be able to attend that.

The forum will be moderated by Jason Davis, chamber board president. Davis will give the legislators 3-5 minutes for introductory remarks before inviting the event’s sponsors and high school students to ask questions. After the sponsors and high school students have asked their questions, the general public will have a chance to ask questions. Coffee and donuts will be provided.

The chamber has made some changes to the forum’s structure. It is asking members of the public to form their questions around one of the following topics:

• Employment/labor shortage

• Tax reform bill

• Removing income tax

• One-time funding requests

• Questions in regard to the navigator pipeline

Briggs said the chamber board decided on these topics as the focus of the forum, and that the board plans to change the topics from month to month.

“We restructured the legislative forum mostly to be able to help the legislators so we can stay on topic,” Briggs said. “In the past, there was too much variety, and the open Q and A sessions was not working out well. We decided to update the format for 2022.”

In April 2021, the chamber held a legislative forum over Zoom at which none of the four legislators were present. The four legislators released a statement the following day saying they all had other obligations, and that the legislators were unhappy with the forums because of their lack of business-oriented questions.

Another change for 2022 is that the chamber used to have a lottery-style system for choosing which member of the public could ask a question. Briggs said the chamber is doing away with that, and will now ask residents to simply line up at a microphone.

Those who wish to send questions ahead of time are invited to submit them to info@fairfieldiowa.com, or by calling the chamber at 641-472-2111.

Saturday’s forum is the first of four legislative forums the chamber plans to hold in 2022. The dates of the other three forums are as follows: Feb. 19, March 19, April 30.

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com