Springfield came to Evanston on Thursday at the city’s Ecology Center, 2404 McCormick Blvd., where the League of Women Voters of Evanston hosted a group of state legislators and staffers to share updates at its annual Legislative Luncheon event.
League members filled the Ecology Center’s multipurpose room to hear from the panel, which included Rep. Robyn Gabel (18th District), Rep. Kevin Olickal (16th) and Sen. Ram Villivalam (8th). Chiefs of Staff Liam Harding and Ben Isabel joined on behalf of Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz (17th) and Sen. Laura Fine (9th), respectively, who were unavailable due to other commitments.
Gabel, whose district includes most of Evanston, also served as the House Majority Leader and chief budgeteer, describing the former role as helping Speaker Chris Welch “organize and make sure that the House is operating in a functional, good way.”
“I can’t be responsible for all their behavior; there’s things you may have seen in the paper recently,” Gabel said, seemingly referring to the recent resignation of Rep. Harry Benton (97th District) over an investigation finding he committed sexual harassment. “But I certainly do my best.”
Budget challenges
As for the budgeteer role, Gabel said her team “had a blast” working on the state’s 2026-27 budget, which passed in the early morning hours of June 1 at the end of the legislature’s spring session. While its $55.9 billion is a new state record, she noted it’s a relatively small increase over the previous year’s $55.1 billion.
“It’s not growing these days,” Gabel said of the state budget. “We’re under a lot of restrictions from H.R. 1 that was passed on the federal scene, and you know, a lot of our programs are federal-state programs. So we’re very concerned about our budget for next year.”
This year’s balancing act was partially achieved by revenue from a new digital ads tax: starting Jan. 1, companies with at least $1 million in gross annual receipts from targeted digital advertisements will be subject to a 10% tax on that revenue. Olickal highlighted this as significant since a “huge part of the economy” today is “entirely digital.”
“Big tech companies use our personal information to sell us products, and they do not pay a tax on those advertisements” today, Olickal said. “There’s a little bit of litigation around this, but we are confident that it [the tax] will succeed, and that is going to generate over a billion dollars, at least.”
The state budget also includes a new 0.2% tax on sales of digital assets, i.e. cryptocurrencies, and other new taxes on social media platforms, fantasy sports and sports betting.
AI and data centers remain leading issues
The digital focus extended beyond taxes, as regulations for artificial intelligence and data centers came up repeatedly at Thursday’s event. Harding highlighted the passage of the Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act, which creates new reporting and disclosure requirements for large AI companies and subjects them to third-party compliance audits.
But there’s more legislation to come from Springfield in the next session and beyond, with Gabel describing AI as “this generation’s issue of nuclear power” in terms of “how to control it.” Harding said Rep. Gong-Gershowitz is focused on regulating AI “companion chatbots” that mimic human speech with users, arguing AI companies “should be held liable” for their chatbots’ involvement in incidents like youth suicides and last year’s Florida State University shooting.
“It’s tough, because AI is massive and is in every state, and they’re going to say they [AI companies] should be federally regulated, not by the states,” Harding said. “But that’s still not going to stop us here to try to rein them in and hold them accountable.”
On data centers, Villivalam said they’re an issue for “every district in the state,” and highlighted that he and Gabel co-sponsored the “POWER Act” bill, aimed to regulate their development and power usage, as the energy-intensive sites have been blamed for rising electricity costs for Illinois residents. The bill failed to pass in the spring session, but Gabel said that initial version was “filed as a starting point” to start deliberations towards a final version, which she expects to return before the end of the term.
“We have a group working, the House, the Senate and the governor’s office, on a bill that we are hoping to have ready by November,” Gabel said, referring to the legislature’s brief veto session held at the end of each year. “That is our goal. If we can’t get enough support for November, we will do it next early next year.”
This year’s veto session will run from Nov. 17 to 19 and Dec. 1 to 3. After that, legislators will briefly convene one more time for a “lame duck” session, which must end before the next legislative term begins on Jan. 13.
BUILD plan will come back, Gabel says
While data centers aren’t a local issue in Evanston, rezoning absolutely is, as the Envision Evanston 2045 project is still waiting to begin the zoning code rewrite phase over two and a half years after its public launch. The project’s most contentious proposal — banning single-family zoning restrictions citywide — was covered in the “BUILD Plan” package of housing proposals advanced by Gov. JB Pritzker during the legislature’s spring session, which ultimately didn’t advance in either chamber.
Gabel said the BUILD bills “did not have a lot of support in either” chamber as they were first presented, facing significant headwinds from municipal governments opposed to the state overruling local zoning rules. The bills would preempt “home rule authority,” meaning cities like Evanston would not be allowed to adopt local laws contradictory to the new state laws.
But Gabel doesn’t see the bills as fully dead, either.
“I do think it’s coming, you know, we are going to be looking at it again,” she said. “There will be some bills that we will be able to pass, that will have enough support among all the members and the interested parties.”
Gabel highlighted the bill to allow accessory dwelling units in all residential neighborhoods as one bill that could pass sooner than others, noting that Evanston legalized them citywide several years ago and “it hasn’t created big problems.” After the panel discussion ended, she declined to share which other bills may be close to passing.
State legislators talk budget, data centers, BUILD plan and more at luncheon panel is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston’s most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.
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August 20, 2026 at 08:54PM
