September 18, 2009

Corona Chamber Supports IOU Reform

The Corona Chamber of Commerce supports a proposal in the State Legislature that would authorize state agencies to accept California-issued IOU’s as payment for outstanding debt to the state by businesses and individuals.

A business or an individual could present the IOU to agencies such as the DMV and it would fully satisfy the outstanding obligation. The Corona Chamber supports this proposed legislation because we believe no business or individual should be denied the right to submit as payment the very monetary instrument that was issued by the state. The proposal will be considered by the State Legislature in 2010.

“This just makes plain sense. We should be able to pay bills owed to the state with the financial instrument issued to us as payment by the state. Business owners and residents should not have to shoulder the burden of identifying alternative payment sources while the state continues to spend out of control, and issue IOUs,” stated Cynthia Schneider, Chair of the Corona Chamber’s Legislation Action Committee. “Fortunately, the state has recently implemented a program that will repay those individuals and businesses that were recently forced to accept payment in the form of IOU’s. T this piece of legislation will address the problem should IOUs be reissued in the future,” continued Schneider.