SPRINGFIELD — Pushing back against Gov. JB Pritzker’s most ambitious legislative initiative of the year, an organization representing Illinois cities and towns had competing housing legislation introduced Thursday — a bill that claims to share the governor’s goals of expanding housing supply but strips out the mandates that have alarmed local leaders across the state.

The Illinois Municipal League’s proposal is the most organized resistance yet to Pritzker’s sweeping “middle housing” plan, which the governor made a centerpiece of his State of the State address in February and an initiative that the governor could use as a progressive credential ahead of a potential 2028 presidential run.

While Pritzker’s plan would require municipalities statewide to allow denser housing, the municipal league’s bill, introduced by Homewood Democrat Rep. Will Davis, makes participation voluntary by dangling state money as an incentive rather than wielding state authority as a hammer. Local leaders have spent months objecting to Pritzker’s plan as an unprecedented state intrusion into their authority to shape their own communities.

“Even amongst our own members, it’s not an all or none, it’s, ‘Let’s have a conversation,’” Illinois Municipal League CEO Brad Cole, one of the most vocal opponents of Pritzker’s plan, said Monday prior to the bill’s introduction.

Pritzker’s proposal would loosen zoning restrictions that currently limit the residential density and allow four- to eight-unit buildings on many lots now zoned for single families, as well as accessory dwelling units — commonly called granny flats, or ADU’s — in backyards across the state. Supporters say the changes would open the door to new multifamily construction and eventually lower costs by increasing supply. Additional local rules for building size and height could still apply, but the prospect of allowing four-flats or six-unit apartments on quiet suburban streets, and granny flats in backyards across the state, raised alarms.

Pritzker’s office stood by the governor’s Building Up Illinois Developments, or BUILD,  proposal in a statement on Thursday, insisting that change is needed to address Illinois’ housing needs.

“A coordinated, statewide approach is necessary to solve the housing affordability crisis. The current status quo has only deepened the housing shortage, so the time for action is now,” Pritzker’s office said in a statement. “Governor Pritzker’s BUILD plan comprehensively addresses Illinois’ housing affordability crisis by removing unnecessary barriers to development and creating clear pathways for the construction of accessible, affordable homes.”

Cole characterized his organization’s proposal not as a counter but as “an alternative proposal” built around a voluntary incentive program of state funds to support local participation in expanding housing supply, including locally chosen overlay districts where middle housing would be allowed by right. He pressed his case at a House subject-matter hearing on Wednesday with pointed rhetoric.

“How many people have stopped you while you were knocking on doors and said, ‘Gee, this zoning is really beating me up in my pocketbook?’ Or, ‘If we only had one stairwell, I could really afford my mortgage?’” Cole asked rhetorically during the subject-matter hearing.

In addition, the new bill would allow municipalities to prioritize blighted properties for redevelopment, potentially with state assistance; exempt certain housing building materials from some taxes; and prevent private homeowners’ associations from restrictions that “unreasonably prohibit” ADUs. It would also cap upfront rental costs at one month’s rent. Whether to allow single-stairway buildings — a provision of the governor’s proposal for many buildings up to six stories — would remain up to individual municipalities.

Jung Yoon, chief of policy in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office, told a Senate hearing late last month that the city had a “nuanced position” on Pritzker’s plan. Chicago didn’t fully oppose it, but city leaders asked for several changes. Some aldermen have raised sharper objections, including Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, who is also running for Congress. He said at Wednesday’s House hearing that he was worried about unfunded mandates on cities, among other issues.

While some municipal leaders in earlier interviews with the Tribune stressed that they did not want to allow denser housing in their towns, Cole said Monday some would be swayed by lower costs.

“The incentives that we’re talking about, some of the different proposals, take off some real costs, create real savings,” he said. “And so we think that together, that’s what would incentivize new development.”

The IML’s proposal, which was posted online several days prior to the bill’s introduction, repeatedly stressed that it did not impose mandates on cities.

On the same day the IML bill was introduced, the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus — an organization made up of the Chicago region’s 275 cities, towns and villages — released a collection of strategies, case studies and interviews with local leaders titled “Home Grown: Local Housing Strategies in Action.” It documents how cities have expanded housing supply and affordability on their own. Executive Director Neil James said the report had been in the works for years, making its release amid the statewide housing debate coincidental, but that it makes the point that cities can increase housing without a state mandate.

“Communities are doing a lot of good work, I think that’s another narrative that’s kind of getting lost,” James said. “There’s been talk that communities aren’t doing enough in regards to trying to get affordable housing in their areas. I think that’s far from the truth.”

But housing advocates were unimpressed with the IML proposal. The housing groups say towns are too restrictive about building housing and need a push to allow more density, which they think Pritzker’s BUILD program provides. The bills making up Pritzker’s plan have yet to clear either the state House or Senate.

“A big part of the IML counterproposal to BUILD is to basically say that municipalities continue to have the right to allow two-flats if they so choose,” Steven Vance, a co-lead at Abundant Housing Illinois, said last week. “That’s not good enough.”

The Illinois Realtors Association, a strong backer of Pritzker’s legislation, was even harsher, blasting the IML’s proposal as legally dubious and inadequate to address the state’s housing needs.

“This proposal isn’t just misguided, it’s dangerous,” Jeff Baker, Illinois Realtors Association CEO, said in a statement earlier this month as the legislation was detailed but before it was formally filed. “It raises serious legal questions, proposes outright price fixing, and undermines the very goal of making housing more accessible. At the worst possible moment, IML is throwing a wrench into efforts that are actually moving Illinois forward.”

Illinois faces a shortage of about 142,000 housing units and would need to build 227,000 units over five years to keep pace with demand, according to a joint study published last year by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. At the same time, rent increases in Chicago are outpacing national trends. While it’s known for relative affordability compared with the largest coastal cities in the U.S., Chicago had the sixth-fastest year-over-year rent growth in the country as of March, even as rents fell nationally, according to Apartment List.

Aside from raising municipal leaders’ concerns about losing control over development in their cities and towns, the governor’s plan has also attracted opponents who say the policy focuses too little on traditional affordable housing and fails to protect existing lower-cost units from displacement.

Cole argued Monday that many of his members would embrace denser housing if the financial incentives were right and pushed back on the idea local leaders are inherently opposed to growth.

“There’s no mayor in Illinois that doesn’t want their community to grow,” Cole said. “Everybody does.”

State Rep. Kam Buckner, the sponsor of Pritzker’s proposals, framed the broader question at Wednesday’s House hearing in terms that capture the divide between the two camps.

“This is something we don’t want to happen to our cities,” Buckner said. “We want it to happen with our cities.”

O’Connor reported from Springfield.