Marc Brown, vice president of state affairs for the Consumer Energy Alliance, said forced electrification would cost $55,000 for the average single-family home. “That includes when you’re redoing your panel, heat pumps, changing out a gas furnace, all your appliances,” he said. Further, the CEA said forced electrification could increase Illinois utility bills by about $2,631 per household.

Gov. JB Pritzker said he told state agencies to “take every available action to protect veterans’ access to care” after “reports that the Trump administration is proposing rules that would allow VA providers to deny military veterans healthcare based on their marital status and political affiliation.” Three days before Pritzker ordered state officials to take action, VA Secretary Doug Collins had publicly said the report was wrong.

State Rep. Steven Reick said the state’s underfunded pensions are so massive, he doesn’t expect it to be solved within his lifetime. One fix to increase benefits Reick said came with an “astronomical” taxpayer cost.

A new report from the nonprofit Protect Kids from Lead Coalition finds 72 Illinois towns have exceeded federal lead limits in drinking water, and with the limit dropping to 10 ppb by 2027, more could soon follow. “They’re caught between rising prices and crumbling infrastructure that’s been neglected for decades by the majority party, and they have really seen the prioritization of political pet projects over the basic needs of our communities,” said State Rep. Reagan Deering,

Republican critics drew a comparison between the new bridge fund and the broad authority granted to Gov. JB Pritzker during the COVID-19 pandemic to spend billions of dollars in federal aid, including $2 billion from pandemic relief to make up for lost revenues at the time. Unlike the COVID aid, however, the uses of the bridge fund are limited to where the legislature already approved funding.

“Illinois like California and other states are now essentially one-party rule. Once that happens the power of all elected officials, the servants of we citizens, become absolute. Corruption and their self-serving policy get shoved down our throats.”

David Greising of the Better Government Association: “In the short term, for all concerned, no bill is better than a bad bill — more prudent than a blind guess about the costs and consequences of closing a $771 million budget gap with measures that received the lightest of public scrutiny.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling affirming Tennessee legislation that restricts gender-affirming care for minors is likely to have ripple effects in states with strong protections of transgender health like Illinois, which will be asked to take on more out-of-state patients.

House Bill 3247, known as the “Safe Schools for All Act,” would prohibit schools from disclosing, or threatening to disclose, information about a student’s immigration status or the status of a person associated with the child. And it would require schools to develop procedures for reviewing and authorizing requests from law enforcement agents attempting to enter a school or school facility.

“Why does that matter? Because Illinois’ Democratic majority has contained its opposition, which represents about 1 in 3 Illinoisans, to the point that their constituents’ concerns rarely get addressed in state law. The main way Democrats have frozen out their Republican peers: partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts.”

“If the governor doesn’t veto this measure, he’ll undo much of the work he and his economic development partners have done to attract new investment to the Land of Lincoln. Because the message SB 328 sends to businesses everywhere is loud and clear: Do business here and expose your company to a new, unfair and potentially costly risk.

The Fiscal Year 2026 budget includes a $1.3 million increase for career and technical education programs to expand access to underserved students using an updated equity-based formula.

Public-sector unions pressed for late-session bills that would have boosted those Tier 2 pensions and let workers retire earlier, but their efforts failed. Instead, state lawmakers inserted the “SSWB Base Reserve Fund” into House Bill 1075, the massive “Budget Implementation Act.” A press release describes the fund as setting aside $75 million “to cover the estimated first-year costs of adjusting SSWB for State Tier 2 members until legislation is enacted.”