// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

[00:00:00]
Brian Mackey: From Illinois Public Media, this is The 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey. Lawmakers here in the 21st state are in the final days of their spring legislative session with a constitutional deadline of May 31st. There's a long list of unfinished business, passing a state budget, imposing regulations on artificial intelligence, regulating how insurance companies raise rates, attempting to make housing more affordable, and coming up with a deal that could decide whether the Chicago Bears play in Illinois or Indiana.

Joining us to talk about all that is Mawa Iqbal, statehouse reporter for public radio stations across Illinois. Mawa, welcome back to The 21st Show.

[00:00:44]
Mawa Iqbal: Hey, thanks for having me.

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Brian Mackey: Listeners, you can join us today, 800-222-9455, just the next 15 minutes or so. Especially if any of those issues before the General Assembly might be affecting your life, you know, insurance rates, rent, property taxes. Let us know, 800-222-9455. 800-222-9455.

All right, Mawa, what does the overall budgetary picture look like heading into this final week of the scheduled session?

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Mawa Iqbal: Hey, Brian, yeah, there's much to discuss here when it comes to the state's budget, right? This is always the, you know, highly anticipated final legislative package that lawmakers do like to wait till the very last minute to debate on and pass, but it looks like for this year's budget, you know, things aren't dire, but they're also not great either.

Two weeks ago, the governor's budget office and the Commission on Governmental Forecasting and Accountability, which is the legislature's research arm, they released a joint report that basically showed that there's growing pessimism over the direction of the global economy, and basically saying that a lot of these federal initiatives, economic, you know, policies that the Trump administration's passing, but also, you know, policies related to tariffs and things like that, cuts, federal cuts to state programs — this is all creating a problem for Illinois lawmakers who are trying to draft up this budget, and basically saying that revenue is less than what they were projecting earlier in the year.

And it's important to note too that Governor Pritzker, when he unveiled his budget proposal back in February, he had called for all kinds of spending for certain programs based on these previous revenue projections. Now the governor's budget office is saying that those revenues are down by less than 1%. So it's not a huge difference. There's no quote unquote "April surprise," which is what we like to say around here, you know, whenever these budget entities release their April projections — there's no, you know, drastic change, but it does mean that there will have to be less spending than the governor was calling for back in February. And like I said, much of this is due to federal uncertainty.

You have, you know, Deputy Governor Andy Manar who released a statement that said that this underscores the state's need to remain focused on fiscal discipline as the entire country is forced to continue to grapple with economic and geopolitical uncertainty that the Trump administration is creating. So, of course, you know, pointing the finger at the Trump administration, which is not new with Governor Pritzker and with other Democratic leaders in Illinois. Obviously you have a lot of Republican lawmakers who are saying that, you know, we should not be pointing the finger at Trump but instead on our own fiscal, you know, responsibility and policies that we're proposing.

And I will say too that right now, just given that revenues are down and there are, you know, cuts to spending and spending towards certain programs, a lot of progressive Democrats are talking about more progressive streams of revenue. So this could be something like the billionaires tax amendment that that's been thrown around, talking about, you know, cuts or adding more taxes to corporations. And so we'll see if those end up appearing in this budget. There seems to be a growing political will even amongst more moderate Democrats to have more progressive streams of revenue.

But yeah, it seems to be that, you know, something — what the Democratic leadership and the governor had expected — which is that with this budget season it's gonna be pretty tight. We're gonna have to trim the fat here and there. Tighten our belts, whatever analogy they'd like to use. But yeah, at least it's not as dire, I think, as some people were expecting.

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Brian Mackey: Trim the fat, tighten the belts. Maybe the analogy in 2026 is, you know, take a shot of [Wegovy] in the state budget. You know, it's interesting you mentioned the progressives, because that is the real rub here, right? As much as we talk about Democrats and Republicans, the fight in Illinois — because the Democrats now have such large majorities — is between the progressives and the moderates. We've seen Mayor Johnson in Chicago, you know, urging increased, you know, different, creative ways of raising money there. That that hasn't gained a lot of traction in Springfield. Can you say a little bit more, if there's more to say, about that dynamic at play here?

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Mawa Iqbal: Yeah, it's a very tense dynamic, right? And it's been fraught, you know, for a while now, ever since Mayor Johnson became the mayor. He came down, you know, a couple — I wanna say a couple weeks ago, but honestly, time is so hard to keep track of here in Springfield. I'm not sure when things happen — but Mayor Johnson, as well as other mayors all over the state, came down to Springfield where they were advocating for more money towards the Local Governmental Development Fund, which is one of the areas that Governor Pritzker and some lawmakers are proposing cuts to, right, as we're talking about less revenues coming into the state. So, you know, that's one issue where Mayor Johnson is really, really pushing the state forward for more funding for municipalities.

They're also butting heads on this Bears bill — what we call the Bears bill, but its official name is the Megaprojects Development Bill — which is, for those who aren't so familiar with it, even though it's been pretty talked about so far this past session, it's basically a tax plan that's aimed at incentivizing the Chicago Bears to stay in Illinois versus going over to Hammond, Indiana. And Mayor Johnson in the past week or so has renewed his calls for keeping the Bears in the city of Chicago versus in Arlington Heights, which is where the Bears are most likely looking to develop now if they were to stay in Illinois.

So, you know, Mayor Johnson and [Pritzker] are butting heads on that as well. But you know, this seems to be kind of a pattern, right? At least in the years that I've been here, where Mayor Johnson will come to Springfield sort of towards the end of the session, he'll have his wish list of progressive revenue ideas for the city of Chicago that he wants state funding help from. And he hits a wall with Governor Pritzker, who is more hesitant to just hand over money to the mayor, especially now when they're having such fiscal difficulties with, you know, less revenues, federal uncertainty, etc.

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Brian Mackey: All right, let me remind listeners, this is The 21st Show. We're talking with Mawa Iqbal, who covers the Illinois Statehouse for public radio stations across Illinois. If you want to join us, 800-222-9455. 800-222-9455.

I want to talk about the Chicago Bears, but let's save that for last, since, you know, really there are more pressing issues, I would argue, facing the people of Illinois. And one of those has to do with artificial intelligence, right? Perhaps an existential issue, some people say. Talk about what Illinois lawmakers think their role is in regulating this — you know, what is arguably an international, human[ity]-wide problem.

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Mawa Iqbal: Right, like you said, yeah, this is a growing problem. It's been sort of an existential issue for lawmakers over the past few years, especially — they've, in the House, convened this AI working group, so it's a group of House Democrats whose main goal is to come up with legislation regulating AI, or attempting to regulate AI, as it becomes more ubiquitous, more powerful, more ever-present.

And so what's happening now is this group of Senate Democrats have unveiled this package of eight AI regulation bills, and many of those bills are modeled after what we're seeing in the New York and California legislatures. I would say that the landmark bill amongst the eight bills would be this one regulation which would basically require — or mandate, I should say — companies like ChatGPT and [Claude] who offer these open AI models to contract with a third-party entity to basically review their risk mitigation strategies, right? So, like, what are these companies doing to make sure that users aren't getting onto their AI models and searching up, you know, how do I build a nuclear weapon, or how do I commit a mass crime, right? Things like that. And this would have a pretty consequential effect on the AI industry, right?

There are also many other bills that have to do with, you know, how different entities, different sectors in Illinois use AI. So for example, there's a bill that regulates how landlords use AI, and basically saying that they can't use AI for setting rent prices. There's also a bill that would prohibit school districts from using AI to grade students. There's also a bill that aims to put guardrails in place for children who use AI, who are maybe suffering with mental health issues and want to look up maybe how to harm themselves. So there are a lot — this package of bills covers a wide swath of areas.

I would say that it has a lot of positive momentum. So this package was unveiled about a week or so ago, and it's been moving through the committee process, you know. There's been people testifying, and it seems like it will probably pass both chambers by the end of the session — though, you know, anything could happen, right? This package obviously has a lot of opposition from the tech industry, from AI giants, from Meta, you know, different tech companies. But there seems to be a pretty broad consensus amongst Republicans and Democrats both that AI needs to be regulated. It's the leadership also agrees that something needs to be done. So I can definitely see it passing by May 31st, but I'm also not in the business of doing predictions, so I guess we'll just have to see what happens.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah, you know, one always wonders how much one state can really make a difference in this stuff, but then I just have to think — if everybody has a Google Nest camera, you know, there are certain features that are disabled only in Illinois because of the laws that are here in terms of facial recognition and stuff like that. So it is possible.

Let's talk, in the time we have remaining, data centers, and then maybe we can leave a minute or two for the Bears. What's going on with regulating data centers? We've seen all kinds of movement locally in Illinois. Is there a prospect still for something to change statewide?

[00:12:00]
Mawa Iqbal: Yeah, it's tough, right? This was one of Governor Pritzker's proposals — like I mentioned earlier, he had a big budget address in February, and one of his policy proposals was regulating data centers. So he was calling for regulations in regards to the energy that data centers use, right — namely, making sure that data center developers have their own energy source to pull from to operate their data centers instead of pulling from our power grids that we use for electricity, right. And he also was calling for the suspension — a two-year suspension — of a tax credit program in Illinois that gives data center developers a tax break.

But you know, this legislation really hasn't moved. The most traction it has gotten is in the House, where House Democrats have convened subject matter hearings. And subject matter hearings are important for lawmakers in that it's a public hearing where people can come in and they can testify for or against a certain bill, right? So it gives lawmakers and the public an opportunity to hear all sides of an argument or an issue. But lawmakers aren't taking a vote on the bill when it's a subject matter hearing like this, right? So there's no action happening.

And that's kind of where the data center package is now — there hasn't been action. It doesn't seem like there'll be action on it. I've heard that it's really the municipalities that are lobbying against it because it would sort of impede on local control. And like you said, Brian, there's been a lot of action amongst local municipalities and counties when it comes to regulating data center construction and development, because this is a pretty largely local issue, right? Like, you have a lot of people who own farmland who have concerns. You have a lot of residents who have concerns with data centers in their areas, you know, just with noise and with electricity and power usage, with the environmental issues, right, with using water. So, you know, it's hard, I think, for state lawmakers to come up with a statewide, broad-based regulation.

And so, you know, this is one of those things where I don't see it happening this session. That doesn't mean that it can't come back in the veto session or even in the lame duck session, which will happen next January with the same General Assembly before they switch out to the new members, right. But we'll see. I mean, it's certainly top of mind for a lot of people, just like AI is. But I don't think it will really go anywhere, it seems like, this session at least.

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Brian Mackey: All right, just about a minute left. Let's talk Bears. What are the big stumbling blocks in order to keep the Bears in Illinois? Or, you know, are people ready to say, let Indiana have them?

[00:15:03]
Mawa Iqbal: Well, I think there's a lot of political will for the governor to keep the Bears in Illinois, right? I don't think he wants to be known as the governor who lost the Bears to Indiana, especially when he's up for an historic third term as governor and also potentially maybe a presidential term in 2028.

I think right now the biggest stumbling block, or the biggest roadblocks, for this bill to get passed — which is now in the Senate, it's passed the House, it just needs to pass the Senate before it gets to the governor's desk — is that there are a lot of Chicago lawmakers who are wanting the bill, or the Bears, to stay in Chicago. And like I mentioned earlier in the show, Mayor Brandon Johnson has renewed his calls for the Bears to stay in the city and has butted heads with the governor, who says that the Bears don't want to stay in the city and that our best chances of keeping the Bears in Illinois is for them to stay in Arlington Heights. So let's not try to divert, you know, attention to Chicago — [let's keep it to] Arlington Heights, right?

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Brian Mackey: Like the T-shirt I have says, the quote unquote "Chicago Bears of Arlington Heights." We'll have to leave it there. Mawa Iqbal, statehouse reporter for public radio stations across Illinois, thanks for sharing your reporting with us. Appreciate it.

[00:16:15]
Mawa Iqbal: Thank you.

[00:16:17]
Brian Mackey: All right, we're gonna take a short break. We'll have more 21st Show after this. We'll be right back.