The termination petition turned into CDFA last week by United Dairy Families, WUD, MPC, CDI, DFA, LoLakes and CDC, which called for a 5-year Sunset was denied by Secretary Ross last Friday. One glaring detail left out of the petition is the cost of the petition. We estimate that the Grade A shippers will be billed approximately $740,000,000 and if you include the payments we paid last year, we will be just shy of paying a billion dollars to the quota holders who are demanding this money, if we want to retire the QIP Tax. Who gets the billion dollars according to this plan? It’s the 300 quota holders who have over 29% quota and everyone else would be paying the bill.
This petition called for a termination date of March 1, 2025, which is a year and 4 months after the State of California would have called a hearing to decide if the State wanted to continue with the QIP Tax. This tactic of trying to avoid the review of the Tax in November 2023 and extracting another billion dollars out of our dairies here in California, was just too much for our coalition to lend our support to it. The average dairyman would have to borrow over $1,200,000 from their banks and hand it over to the 300 quota dairymen and receive nothing in return. Stop QIP believes that there are better ways to spend our money to help our industry, such as Marketing, Advertising, Infrastructure, Research and Development and Paying Down Debt.
We still have a court date in May on the cease and desist motion we served CDFA in December. Our petition with 353 signatures for the suspension of Chapter 3.5 has been received by the state three weeks ago and is currently being counted for signatures. After our petition signatures are validated, the Secretary can call a hearing and then a referendum. The referendum would ask if we want to continue the QIP Tax. If the ballot doesn’t generate 51% affirmation by the dairies, Chapter 3.5 is suspended, and it would suspend the QIP Tax. We still have our other Petition which also has well over 300 signatures for Chapter 3 that we are holding to see if it is necessary to submit.
We want to thank everyone who has contributed but remember until it has been voted out and signed by the Secretary, we must remain vigilant. We also want to thank Secretary Ross who committed to staying neutral and not favor either side. She committed to making sure that we all follow the rules in this process. That is all we have ever wanted and for self-determination; there isn’t a better way – then to have a vote.
Be wary of ANY new petitions coming forward that demand you continue to pay another 5 long years into a program that we believe was improperly implemented to begin with. The QIP tax continues to drain most dairymen’s bank accounts to the tune of $400,000.00 each and every day!
It’s time to end the unfair, illegal QIP dairy tax today – not 5 years from now!Stay tuned for the state’s hearing on our 3.5 petition and we’ll keep you posted on our lawsuit challenging the program.
We will not quit until the QIP tax is ended once and for all.
Stay informed,
Stop QIP Dairy Tax
