* Gov. JB Pritzker was asked today whether ethics reform would be a priority during veto session during an unrelated press conference…

Reporter: Looking ahead to veto session, I’m curious whether ethics reform will be a legislative priority for you on the level of the POWER Act…

Pritzker: I think you know that there only are really six days of a session that’s usually called veto session. So it’s about taking up vetoes, and when you don’t have vetoes or not many, you take up anything else you can in a very short period of time. It also requires a supermajority vote to get anything done. So I like to set expectations low, because generally speaking, we don’t get a lot done in a veto session just because it’s so, so short.

So that’s kind of my broader answer to your question, but the narrower answer is on ethics legislation. Nearly every year that I’ve been in office, we’ve taken advancements in our ethics laws. I’ve proposed many of those changes, and I’m always looking for new things to do. But the things that we want to focus on are the things that aren’t already illegal, let’s say, and where we think we can narrow the possibility of anybody breaching their duty as a public servant. So, again, those ideas have been floating around for some time. Not enough hearings have been done on them, but I’d love to take them up. I think it’s more likely that we would take it up in the general session beginning next year.

Reporter: I think your staff has at least floated some specific ideas as far as adding members of the public to the ethics commission, requiring certain reports to be published. Are those specific things you’re interested in?

Pritzker: We’re trying to listen to the legislators also because we’ve got the vast majority, in fact, nearly all of the legislators are people who are following all the ethics rules and who wanted to have their colleagues do better, and so so it’s really a conversation with the legislature, and I would say we’ll see whether we’re able to produce something in the coming full session starting in January. […]

Reporter: And then focusing back on legislature, when was the last time you talked to Speaker Welch, and if you sat down with him and or the Senate President?

Pritzker: Well, I just talked to the Senate President here for the most recent time, but frequently, and the the Speaker of the House [I talk] to him when we have finished product or at least something that’s nearly finished that we think we ought to bring up in the veto session, but there’s the last time I sat with the speaker was when we had a meeting with the the the Bears and the NFL. That was last time I actually was in person with him in a meeting. I think I ran into him at an event not too long ago, but we see each other frequently and certainly have interactions. But as I mentioned to Olivia, there’s such a short period of time in the veto session. It’s unlikely we’ll have a whole slate of legislation. It’ll just be a few specific items that get brought up.