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NOTE: This news article featuring President & CEO, Eric Spoonmore, was originally published by IDS - Gabby Rogers on Friday, March 7th, 2025.  The council chambers are pictured Sept. 4, 2024, in City Hall in Bloomington. The city council approved construction to begin on the Monroe County Convention Center expansion at a meeting Wednesday. Photo by Molly Gregory / The Indiana Daily Student A round of applause filled the council chambers after Bloomington City Council unanimously passed the critical step in the years-long Monroe County Convention Center expansion project.
The council greenlighted $46,825,000 in lease rental revenue bonds to renovate the center.
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NOTE: This news article featuring Senior Director of Government & Community Relations, Christopher Emge, was originally published by IDS - Safin Khatri on Sunday, January 26th, 2025.  Antiques at the Bloomington Antique Mall are seen Jan. 20, 2025, on West Seventh St. in Bloomington. Originally opened in 1988, Bloomington Antique Mall has showcased many local vendors in a three-floor flee market-style mall. Photo by Michelle Rezsonya / The Indiana Daily Student On a cold and snowy Saturday in Bloomington, Book Corner buzzes with life, providing an escape from the elements. College students browse the shelves, stopping to read the back cover. A few blocks away, Cherry Canary Vintage Clothing hums with the sounds of hangers sliding across the racks, as colorful garments from past decades surround shoppers in the search for the perfect retro piece. These scenes are increasingly common in Bloomington as many members of Gen Z find comfort in retro and vintage lifestyles.
Edward Hirt, a professor of social psychology at IU, said in an email that nostalgia through stories, movies and depictions of events can give people a sense of meaningfulness in their lives, even if they have not physically lived it themselves. Information provided below came from Sponsel CPA Group in an email newsletter on December 12, 2024. We wanted to bring your attention to a significant update regarding the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) and its Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) reporting requirements.
What Happened? On Tuesday, December 3, 2024, a federal district court in Texas issued a nationwide preliminary injunction that:
Following this ruling, the Department of Justice, representing the Department of the Treasury, filed an appeal on December 5, 2024. What This Means for Reporting Companies As long as the preliminary injunction remains in effect:
However, FinCEN has clarified that companies may still voluntarily submit BOI reports if they choose to do so. What Lies Ahead? The future of the CTA and its reporting requirements remains uncertain. The Texas district court’s decision is just one of several ongoing legal challenges. There are conflicting rulings from other federal district courts, and three related cases are currently under appeal. Because of this, it is crucial to stay updated on developments, as the situation could evolve rapidly. Next Steps We are continuously monitoring these developments and will advise clients as needed. Be prepared that the requirement to comply in the future if the CTA is ultimately upheld is a possibility. For further information, please visit the FinCEN Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting and the AICPA beneficial ownership information (BOI) reporting pages. If you would like more detailed information on the legal case, please refer to Texas Top Cop Shop, Inc., et al. v. Garland, et al., No. 4:24-cv-00478 (E.D. Tex.) injunction. NOTE: This news article featuring the President & CEO, Eric Spoonmore, was originally published by WRTV on Wednesday, October 8th, 2024. NOTE: This article that features an event co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, was published on January 22, 2024 in the Herald-Times. The League of Women Voters of Bloomington-Monroe County has invited state legislators representing any parts of Monroe, Brown, and Johnson counties to provide the public with an online legislative update.
The event, co-sponsored by the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, the League of Women Voters of Brown County, and the League of Women Voters of Johnson County, will be 9:30-11 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 27, on Zoom. State legislators will report on their work and priorities for the current session of the Indiana General Assembly. They will first give brief updates on the workings of the Indiana legislative session to date and will then take questions from attendees. To sign up for the Zoom meeting, go to https://lwv-bmc.org/legis-updates. This is the first of three planned legislative updates sponsored by the Leagues and the Chamber on Zoom. Subsequent updates are set for Feb. 17 and March 2. All legislative updates are free and open to the public. Community Access Television Services through the Monroe County Public Library has been invited to record the events, with the video available on the CATS website shortly after each update. The work of the Indiana General Assembly can be followed on its website, http://iga.in.gov, which provides a wealth of information and offers the possibility to track the progress of individual bills. NOTE: This article that features The Chamber's President & CEO, Eric Spoonmore, was published on January 18, 2024 in the B Square Bulletin by Dave Askins. Photos are provided by B Square Bulletin.  At its Wednesday afternoon meeting, Monroe County’s capital improvement board of managers (CIB) took the actions recommended by a three-member committee for moving ahead with the Monroe Convention Center expansion project.
One step was to authorize the issuance of an RFQ (request for qualifications) for a “construction manager as contractor” for the project. Interested firms will have three weeks to respond to the RFQ. The idea is for the three-member committee to winnow the respondents to a short-list by the next meeting of the CIB, which is now set for Feb. 14 at 3 p.m. The full board won’t be picking from the short list at that meeting, but could ratify the committee’s shortlisters. Also approved by the CIB at Wednesday’s meeting was the issuance of an RFQ for an owner’s representative. The idea is that none of the CIB members will have sufficient time to staff the project, and that role should be assigned to an owner’s rep. NOTE: This interview with the Director of Advocacy & Public Policy, Christopher Emge, was originally aired by The 812 podcast, hosted by Steve Volan, a daily show about the basic workings of city government in Bloomington, Indiana on Thursday, January 18th, 2024.  NOTE: This article that features The Chamber's event, Legislative Preview, was published on January 17, 2024 in the Herald-Times by Laura Lane. Photos are provided by Herald-Times.  Eric Kock, from left to right, Shelli Yoder, Bob Heaton and Peggy Mayfield give a legislative update at the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Friday, Jan. 12, 2024, at the Mill in Bloomington. Laura Lane/Herald-Times At the helm of a city with an unhoused population mired in mental health and substance abuse issues, Kerry Thomson asked a panel of state lawmakers last week what they will do about the statewide crisis.
“It cannot be addressed just at the local level,” the Bloomington mayor's written query stated. There was discussion of the challenges, but no answers offered when Thomson suggested the state lead the way toward healthcare and recovery instead of the criminal justice system for vulnerable people not receiving care. Last year, state lawmakers passed bills to boost funding for mental health services across the state. One increases funding to local mental health centers and another directs $100 million to mental health services. NOTE: This article that features The Chamber's event, Legislative Preview, was published on January 12, 2024 in the B Square Bulletin by Dave Askins. Photos are provided by B Square Bulletin.  More than 100 people were assembled at The Mill at midday on Friday for the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce Legislative Preview. This year’s session of the Indiana legislature started on Jan. 8 and will wrap up by mid-March. Friday’s crowd got to hear four Indiana state legislators answer a question posed by Bloomington’s new mayor Kerry Thomson—about mental health. Thomson’s question, which she had written out on one of the cards distributed for that purpose, was read aloud by the Bloomington Chamber’s CEO, Eric Spoonmore: The state is experiencing a mental health and substance use crisis. This cannot be addressed simply at the local level. What can be done about it at the state level, to ensure health care before criminal justice? NOTE: This article shows the Bloomington Business forecast for 2024 and was presented at the Chamber's Futurecast event in November 2023, was published in the Winter 2023 (Volume 98, No. 5) issue of the IBR | Indiana Business Review by Carol O. Rogers, Director and Executive Editor of the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University Kelley School of Business.  Recession or no recession? That was the question we posed last year and the answer was: maybe. Our forecast was split due to many factors, not the least of which were the residual effects of the pandemic shutdowns and slowdowns, supply chain bottlenecks and inflation rearing its generally ugly head. Both our forecast models (thanks to Bill Witte, as always), and general consensus among Kelley School economists, foretold a relatively brief recession or extremely slow and low growth. We know now, at least for the nation as a whole, that we did not experience any consecutive quarters of negative growth (as in, GDP shrinking rather than growing) during the first three quarters of 2023. In fact, many were startled by the 5% growth in GDP between the second and third quarters of 2023. So, what does the economy look like for Bloomington in 2024 and beyond? Let's look at the charts.
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