Evanston’s state lawmakers held a community town hall Monday night, sharing updates from the spring’s legislative session in Springfield and their goals for the fall’s veto session, where key legislation on data centers, housing and the Chicago Bears may be up for consideration.

House Majority Leader Robyn Gabel, who represents most of Evanston, was joined by State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, who represents northeastern Evanston, along with State Sen. Laura Fine at the Evanston Ecology Center Monday night.

Gabel said she felt the state’s $55.9 billion budget was “morally and fiscally responsible,” praising Gov. JB Pritzker for passing balanced, albeit growing, budgets.

With lawmakers likely to gather in Springfield again this fall for a veto session, where a supermajority is needed to pass legislation, Gabel said she hopes to bring forth legislation on data centers, pitching the POWER Act she introduced in the spring, which includes expansive regulations on data centers to protect the state’s electrical grid, water supply and protections against non-disclosure agreements signed by communities and companies building the centers.

“The problem is there’s no regulations at all,” Gabel said, noting stakeholders will continue to meet this summer ahead of the veto session, where she said she hopes to have a complete bill ready this fall that could muster enough support to pass.

After the POWER Act failed to pass by the May 31 spring session deadline, Pritzker paused all new state tax incentives on data centers, citing concerns about energy and water usage, though advocates of the bill criticized the governor for a “lack of engagement” on Gabel’s legislation.

“We are hoping that this will slow it down a little bit so that we will have time to actually put these regulations in place,” Gabel said of Pritzker’s tax incentive pause. “The pressure here is coming up with an agreed-upon bill.”

Fine described the spring session as an “unusual” one, but praised legislation she led, including reforms to senior drivers’ exams and a diaper labeling act Pritzker signed on Friday, requiring “clear ingredient labeling on diaper packaging.”

Gong-Gershowitz focused heavily on artificial intelligence legislation, including the Children’s Online Social Media Safety Act, which she said she “fully expects” Pritzker will sign, adding significant regulations on social media apps and addictive social media algorithms for children under 18.

Pritzker’s housing plan fate uncertain

One of Pritzker’s key legislative pieces pitched this spring was the comprehensive BUILD Plan, a statewide housing plan that included several bills to increase housing stock and reduce barriers for development, including significant changes to zoning requirements that would’ve overruled municipalities.

Several of the bills that would’ve created substantial changes to statewide zoning laws stalled as the session closed, and Evanston’s lawmakers seemed hesitant to throw their full support behind the bills as proposed in the spring.

“I think that his ideas sometimes take more than just one session,” Gabel said of Pritzker’s proposal. “I think that the debate is going to continue next year and that people will be continuing that discussion and figuring out what we can do.”

Speaking with Evanston Now after the town hall, State Sen. Laura Fine, a Democrat from Glenview who also represents Evanston, cited the Illinois Municipal League’s fierce opposition to the bill as one of the reasons it stalled, saying lawmakers are looking at IML’s alternative proposals to determine if they “will get the job done.”

“I think it’s possible to get there, but I think we have to do it in a very careful way,” Fine said. “That we take into account that Illinois is a very big state … and if we pass a bill that’s going to impact every community, we have to make sure it does it in the right way.”

Several suburban lawmakers were reportedly hesitant to back such drastic changes to statewide zoning, which would shift control significantly away from local municipalities. Senate Democrats had proposed an alternative themselves, though neither was adopted before the session concluded in the early hours of June 1.

In Evanston, it would’ve essentially eliminated single-family zoning city-wide and would require the city’s new zoning code to allow multi-unit housing in nearly all corners of the city.

Gabel said she felt lawmakers could “come up with a compromise that will increase housing stock, which we need to do.”

Hanley: “Things need to change dramatically”

With Fine’s term expiring at the end of this year, her likely successor, Patrick Hanley, was also in the room Monday night as an audience member, but told Evanston Now after the lawmakers’ discussion that he “fully recognize[s] that we’re in a housing crisis” when asked about his support for the governor’s BUILD Plan.

“Things need to change dramatically to increase supply,” Hanley, who narrowly defeated Evanston Democrat Rachel Ruttenberg in March’s Democratic primary election, said.

“I think there are different opinions across the suburbs and throughout the district around local control … and that’s going to be something that we need to talk about,” he said.

Hanley’s campaign has listed housing affordability among its key issues, expressing support for expanding accessory dwelling units statewide and growing “missing middle housing,” along with streamlining approval process and expanding transit oriented development.

Many of those changes were built into the governor’s housing plan, which he said he hopes will return this fall during the veto session, while Fine will still be in office.

“The people of Illinois want action on housing,” Pritzker said at a press conference following the spring session. “They want to make sure that we can make it easier for people to build more homes and make it easier for people to create housing on property they’ve already owned. So I’m going to continue to fight.”