The calendar turns to 2026 today, and a host of new state laws — 300 or so — take effect that address issues large and not so large.
Fiscal matters in Illinois tend to dominate the public policy discussion, and appropriately so given our state’s still worrisome level of pension debt and struggle to kickstart economic and population growth.
That reality makes reducing the burden on taxpayers challenging at best. Still, Gov. JB Pritzker looked more than a year ago to establish some sort of tax-cutting record, as he considers a bid for the presidency, by eliminating Illinois’ 1% tax on groceries. The proceeds of the grocery levy went entirely to municipalities across the state, so there was more than a little grumbling from local officials that Pritzker was burnishing his political resume at their expense.
Grocery tax
Pritzker and the General Assembly, recognizing that the tax was an important revenue source for local governments, allowed those localities to “reenact” the tax on their own. A majority of the state’s municipalities did just that, so the tax remains in effect for more than 56% of Illinois residents. But in those cities, towns and villages that didn’t act, the grocery levy disappears beginning today.
They include the city of Chicago, which is seeing roughly $70 million in revenue fall away while straining to plug a $1.2 billion deficit for 2026. Last year, Mayor Brandon Johnson initially called on the City Council to pass the grocery tax, but facing insurmountable opposition, pivoted to championing its demise.
As politically sensitive as the grocery tax is, Chicago’s effective replacement — selling roughly $1 billion in debt owed to the city by individuals and businesses to private collectors — is likely to prove far less reassuring as a revenue source to ratings agencies that are considering whether to downgrade Chicago’s credit after the city’s flirtation with a government shutdown during its fraught budget dealings.
Ultimately, the responsibility for the city’s choices lies with Johnson and the City Council, but Pritzker’s politically convenient move ended up exacerbating Chicago’s budget crisis.
Artificial intelligence
Meanwhile, Springfield Democrats looked at artificial intelligence — its somewhat limited uses now and the likelihood that it could upend life as we know it in the future — and didn’t like what they saw. One notable measure taking effect today requires employers to disclose their use of AI in hiring decisions and bars any such use if it leads to discrimination on the basis of gender, age, race or religion.
Another AI-related measure forbids community colleges from using AI as the sole instructional tool in any classes. Four-year colleges and universities may well be next in line for that prohibition, according to sponsor Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, Democrat of Bridgeview.
Another law limits the potential use of AI in therapy practices, restricting its application in offering mental-health treatment but allowing AI in recordkeeping and administration. We’re fully on board with keeping ChatGPT and its like away from treating those needing therapy and other mental-health services.
Look for more action on the AI front in the upcoming session and likely in years after that. And brace for friction with President Donald Trump’s administration, which has sought via executive order to help the tech giants competing over AI by shielding them from state regulation.
AI is a potent force, and like many such technologies, it can be used for good or for ill. We believe states ought to be able to take reasonable steps to protect their residents from the negative fallout of AI, but there’s much we still don’t understand about how much AI will — or won’t — change our lives.
Tread carefully, Springfield. It won’t be easy navigating the tension between protecting ordinary people from the misuse — both intentional and unintentional — of this powerful technology while allowing for innovation critical to economic growth.
Help for new parents
Springfield had its mind set, too, on making it easier for working people to add to their families. Among the new laws now becoming effective is a measure requiring employers to allow new mothers to pump breast milk on company time for up to a year after the birth of their child.
Another new law mandates that employers provide up to 10 or 20 days (depending on the size of company) of unpaid leave to new parents whose babies are in intensive care. There are protections in the act as well to ensure affected employees maintain their health insurance and can return to work and their leave ends.
We’ve chided state lawmakers at times for making it inordinately difficult on employers in this state in the name of various worker protections, but these safeguards for working parents make sense.
Anna’s Law
For all of the legitimate complaints Springfield gets for both its less-than-transparent processes and some of its outcomes, one of the virtues of state lawmaking is its responsiveness to constituents with a story to tell. A measure beefing up the required training that police officers get in the handling of sexual-assault cases sounds on its face like a modest addition to current law. And in one respect, it is.
But “Anna’s Law,” as Senate Bill 1195 is better known, is notable for the young suburban woman who struck up the courage to change the law after she was the victim of assault in 2021 and endured more trauma once she went to the authorities. Anna Williams, who was 23 in May when lawmakers unanimously passed the bill named after her, decided to petition state legislators after a police officer handling her case said he knew the alleged offender and thought he was a “great guy.” The officer then asked her repeatedly, as well as friends she’d told about the assault soon after it happened, whether it wasn’t consensual. Williams said she asked for a different officer and was denied.
“I was talking to my mom and I was explaining how, like, I can’t just make a law and she said ‘yes you can,’” Williams told Capitol News Illinois.
Good for Williams’ mom. And, most of all, good for Anna Williams. Now a student at Northern Illinois University, Williams joined the National Society of Leadership and Success — which bills itself as the country’s largest leadership honor society and has more than 800 campus chapters, including at NIU — and used her Springfield campaign to meet the program’s requirement to complete an initiative in which the student takes concrete action on an issue about which they’re passionate.
Williams said she hopes the law will encourage other victims to come forward rather than opt not to endure the legal process for fear of being retraumatized.
Rewilding
We wrote with enthusiasm not long ago on the reintroduction of bison two centuries after they were eradicated from the Illinois plains to forest preserve land in west suburban Kane County.
State lawmakers want to see more of that sort of rewilding in other parts of the state. Unlike Anna’s Law, though, this measure didn’t pass unanimously. Republicans in both chambers largely were in opposition.
The law gives the Illinois Department of Natural Resources new authority to return specific land tracts to their historic prairie-like state, including the reintroduction of certain apex predators that once prowled Illinois as well as other once-common but now rarer species such as beavers.
We’re not so sure about the apex predators — and we’re certain some folks in rural parts of Illinois are queasy about that prospect as well — but we’re supportive in general of bringing the prairie back to more of the Prairie State.
May your 2026 proceed as smoothly as prairie grasses swaying in the breeze. Happy New Year!
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
