(dramatic music) - Illinois lawmakers have gone home for the holidays after adjourning their fall veto session at the State Capitol in Springfield.

Welcome to "Illinois Lawmakers."

I'm Jak Tichenor along with Amanda Vinicky of Channel 11's "Chicago Tonight."

Great to have you back on the program, Amanda.

A busy week in Springfield.

The House and Senate have passed slightly different versions of how to elect a Chicago Public School Board.

That's a big deal in the Windy City.

- It's a huge deal in Chicago in part because it's the only city in all of Illinois, only municipality, only school district where members are currently appointed by the mayor and that's something that mayors, of course, had fought to hold onto that power and so the question now is, will the current occupant of the mayor's office continue to get to appoint members to the Board of Education starting in 2025 or is that going to go away entirely?

We know the move is going to be to an elected school board, so at some point it'll be a 20 person body completely elected but the consternation is over what happens in the onset and so as you noted, Jak, there's competing versions.

The House one would allow the mayor to keep half control of the board, but really he gets to appoint the head, the president of the Board of Education, so the mayor would have more control than moving to an elected board right away where who the heck knows what will happen.

So that's the preferred mode of the Senate and a proposal under Senate President Don Harmon.

So we're really watching this one.

It's kind of some different alliances here and there's some interesting politics behind it.

- Senator Harmon says that he's confident that they can bring the various components of this together and get it wrapped up in time by the, I think it's an April 1st deadline of early next year.

- Yeah, Jak, actually this was something that the initial deadline has long since gone.

It was supposed to be accomplished by the end of the spring legislative session.

Then folks said we wanna get it done during veto session because anybody who is going to be running for these positions wants to get their ducks in a row, be it fundraising, also what there's been an agreement on but hasn't been nailed down in the sense that it isn't law yet is the shape of these districts.

Who, where can you run?

Who will you a competition be?

There are so many questions.

So the hope had been from, we'd been hurrying to get it done during veto session, but then this dispute popped up.

It's getting kind of nasty.

The Chicago Teachers Union had a press release issued about Harmon's version that really took a pretty public whack at the Senate president.

Something that you don't often see from a union, of course, a traditional ally of Democrats against a legislative leader, including, I mean the, the Senate president of all people.

So while he, I think you're hearing from both sides, they believe there can be a compromise, it's certain that this was not the preferred end game.

That those who are involved in it really had hoped that this would be ironed out and in order for their to be some sort of resolution to this, you are going to have to have somebody give.

It's not as if you can have a further elected board where it'll be like a 15 five split versus a 20 or the 10 10.

So somebody's going to have to give.

- So well, like so many things in Springfield and the city of Chicago to be continued, we will watch more on this when the spring session starts on January 16th.

One of the school related issues that did not go anywhere was the extension of the invest in kids tax credit program for students who attend parochial and private schools just didn't have the votes in the end.

- It didn't have the votes, although I would've been curious to see what would've happened had it been brought to the floor for a vote because maybe some legislators could have either changed their minds and part of this is also this took place during veto sessions, so at the had leadership institute, a higher vote threshold to have this because they say so we won't get into all that, but basically leadership had said that it needed to get a higher vote threshold, so there could have been some change here.

I think really at the heart of this, it's, yes, it's numbers was there the support for it, but also as mentioned unions, they had really put pressure on the Democratic leadership to not extend this program.

There had been a really full-throated PR campaign by those who are part of Invest in Kids Now to say where does this leave poor children who currently are going to school on scholarship?

It pulls the rug out from under them.

So I just think this is something that it's not a total done deal yet.

You're certainly going to have those advocates return in January, but by then, they'll essentially have to start somewhat fresh.

Those scholarships will run through the current school year, so I think that's where they're hoping that they can live to fight another day, but the program ends December 31.

- And we're gonna have to end on that note.

Amanda Vinicky of "Chicago Tonight" from Channel 11.

Thank you so much for your time and your expertise on the "Illinois Lawmakers" series.

- Thank you, Jak.

- Discussions over how to elect a school board for the city of Chicago have dominated the last few hours of the fall veto session.

Joining us right after the adjournment of the fall veto session on Thursday afternoon is Senate President Don Harmon, Democrat of Oak Park/ Senator, the Senate just passed your version of how to elect a city school board for the City of Chicago.

What's in the bill?

- Well, thanks for having me, Jak.

I'm very proud of the work the Senate has done on the Chicago school board maps, not just today, but really over the last decade.

Chicago is the only school district in the state without an elected representative school board and with the passage of this bill if it proceeds through the process, we'll end that and bring a truly representative democratic school board to the city of Chicago.

It's a little different than other school districts in the state given the size and breadth of the city of Chicago.

We would propose to elect 20 members of the board from 20 districts that are compact and contiguous and designed to represent the diversity of the city of Chicago.

The mayor of the city of Chicago would appoint a president of the board for the first two years and in two years we'd have a full election with a March primary, a nonpartisan primary, and a general election in November to ensure that the winner of the longer terms actually has the support of 50% plus of the voters that choose to participate in the election.

It's the beginning of a long process, but one that I'm confident will reflect the will of the voters in the city who have been denied a voice for far too long.

- How does this square up with the version of the bill that the House passed earlier this week?

- The House passed a bill that is similar in many ways and we in fact in our final bill pulled some of the good ideas from the House bill.

There are some key differences, though.

The House is adhering to what had been a compromise two years ago when the last mayor of the city was advocating for moderation and the current mayor who, before he was elected, was advocating for a fully elected representative school board.

It was a hybrid model where the mayor would appoint 10 members and 10 would be elected.

In the end, we found it, it would leave some part of the city disenfranchised no matter how we did it and the more elegant solution was to elect everybody, elect their representative from the get go.

I will also point out that the Senate bill contains critical ethical constraints on elected and appointed board members.

The House has quickly recognized the shortcoming in their own bill and have already passed a trailer bill to adopt our ethical provisions, but we believe those should all be in the same package so that there's no possibility of them being omitted.

- So how do the the two get reconciled as we go into next year?

- Well, I think a couple of things are gonna happen.

First, we're always willing to listen to good ideas and if there's a way to improve our model, we're happy to entertain it.

But again, I'm very proud of this bill that the Senate passed and I think the longer it sits side by side with the House bill, the more people are going to appreciate that we've provided for ethical constraints, we've provided for the immediate representation of everybody in the city of Chicago and we've provided a path for a orderly transition with the mayor still involved in appointing the board chair.

- For those who are watching around the state of Illinois, why is this a critical step in the evolution of an elected school board for the city of Chicago?

- Well, again, we believe in democracy.

We believe that the people who live in a a school district choose the leaders of that district.

Most of us elect seven board members no matter if it's a large, hundred thousand school board district or a smaller one with just a few thousand residents.

That's the basic principle.

We get to pick the people who represent us and lead the school districts.

Granted, Chicago is different.

It is in every single way, but this model is the best one we could fashion where the voters get to choose who makes decisions about the schools, who makes decisions about the tax levy, who makes decisions about the community.

- Before you go, there was an interesting exercise in bipartisanship this week when the House and the Senate both on bipartisan basis passed an end to the moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants in the state and this deals specifically with the new smaller modular nuclear reactors.

- It does and, again, I'm proud of the Senate in particular for making this truly bipartisan.

Senator Sue Resin, a Republican leader, was the sponsor of the bill.

The governor vetoed it and we had to amend it to address some of those concerns.

I wanna emphasize a couple things.

First, Illinois has, has been blessed with low cost energy in large part because in the 1960s and 70s we built a fleet of old line nuclear reactors that provide a affordable base load energy.

Those won't be with us forever, but it has been a critical part of our energy portfolio.

What we offered in the spring and what now we've passed again is a pathway for this new small modular nuclear reactor technology to be grown and adopted here.

Don't expect anything to happen in the next few years, but without the pathway, there's a real discouragement to investing in fixing those problems.

- Senator Don Harmon, Democrat of Oak Park.

Thank you very much for taking the time to visit with us on "Illinois Lawmakers" on what has been a very, very busy day for you, sir.

- Always good to see you, Jak.

Thanks very much.

- Up next on "Illinois Lawmakers," Senate Republican leader, John Curran of Downers Grove joins us on the program.

Leader, good to have you back on the program, - Jak, it's nice to be back with you.

- We're talking on a Wednesday afternoon and there has been breaking news out of the capitol on a bipartisan agreement dealing with lifting that decades long moratorium on nuclear power plant construction.

and this deal specifically was something called small modular reactors.

Could you give us some insights into what your colleague, Republican Senator Sue Resin of Morris has been able to succeed with?

- Yeah, real proud of our deputy leader in the Republican Senate, Senator Resin.

She's worked tenaciously on this for several years.

We passed a bill in the spring.

The governor had some concerns with language and how it could potentially be interpreted down the road.

She worked really hard with her counterpart in the House and a lot of help from the Senate president as well and really kind of tightened down that language and we have passed in the Senate and it's over in the house now, lifting the moratorium on new nuclear, this is for the small modulars as you referenced, Jak, so a technology we're calling new nuclear and it's gonna be designed for large manufacturers and just some of our really big power users.

This is going to be a more efficient, more economical model and reliable model for them to go to as we continue this push in Illinois towards decarbonizing clean energy, so it's certainly the right thing to do.

Nuclear is a really important part of our energy portfolio.

and this is gonna enhance that.

- So to get around the idea that one of the concerns the governor had was we've had these large scale nuclear plants across the state, they've been extremely expensive, they've had their problems and it's driven up rates for folks.

This is completely out of that equation.

This is something that you said for large manufacturers, but it might also get plugged into the power grid in certain places where coal-fired plants are no longer viable.

- Yeah, absolutely, and Jak, not to rehash old disagreements.

we firmly believe that the bill we passed and sent to the governor in the spring did not allow for large scale new nuclear facilities, but we wanna get past the goal line here and Deputy Leader Resin worked with the governor's office to tighten the language up to address concerns he had that maybe we didn't share, but we got it done and legislating takes compromise.

This is, a especially in central and southern Illinois where we have so much coal going off the grid, this is going to be an exciting technology as it develops.

I'm fortunate enough to have Argonne National Laboratory in my district.

Deputy Leader Resin and I were over talking about this emerging technology with their nuclear scientists.

It's exciting and it is going to be a solution to Illinois' future power needs.

- Now, when are these expected to come online?

I think the date 2026 was mentioned.

- Yeah, Jak, I mean it's a significant investment upfront, so this is technology that currently exists, but it is being enhanced and refined into more really more workable model, so we can't exactly say a specific target date, but this is a near term five year, seven year type of technology that we're gonna be able to tap into.

in Illinois here.

- We got less than a minute left, but there has not been progress on an issue that you've been fighting hard for in the last few months and that has to be the Investing Kids extension.

It doesn't look like it's gonna have the votes to get through the house.

- Yeah, Jak, it's disappointing.

We're not giving up.

We're still here today working.

We're here tomorrow.

We can still get this done.

We have nearly 10,000 lower income children on scholarships that are gonna lose those scholarships if we don't extend this program.

We really gotta place the kids and their success in their educational setting above ideology and so we're gonna continue to push and push.

- So we'll stay tuned on that.

Senator John Curran of Downers Grove, the Senate Republican leader.

Thank you for appearing on "Illinois Lawmakers."

We appreciate it, sir.

- Thank you, Jak.

- Up next on "Illinois Lawmakers," we're joined by Democratic State Representative Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz of Glenview.

Great to have you on the program.

We've been following your career for a while, but it's the first time you've been on the show.

- Well, I appreciate you having me on.

- It's the last day of veto session.

Lots going on, lots of issues still unresolved before lawmakers go home for the holidays.

For you personally, what have you been concentrating on in this veto session?

- Yeah, so for me, my priority this veto session was to make sure that when the bill that I passed last spring to combat deepfake pornography goes into effect.

We have clear definitions around the digital forgery section of the bill, which is really critical.

As we saw recently, a New Jersey high school student was the victim of a deep fake pornography situation that was really devastating to her and so proud to see Illinois be one of the state's leading on this issue.

- The bill that you passed in the earlier session, the spring session House Bill 2123, the Digital Forgeries Act creates a new cause of action against any person who creates or distributes digitally altered kinds of deepfake sexual images.

How did that come to your attention and what does this bill do to address the issue?

- Yeah, so to be honest with you, the summer before I had never heard of a deep fake video.

This was something that was brought to my attention by an intern working in our office over the summer and I started taking a deeper dive into the capabilities of this technology.

Of course, I think all of us are familiar with these short TikTok videos that you see proliferating around that are very obviously fake, right, clearly dubbed, but it was my understanding that as this technology was evolving, that deep fake videos that were in indecipherable from real images were proliferating on the internet and were becoming increasingly problematic, especially for women, that it was becoming a form of intimate image abuse, a new form of gender violence, that the vast majority of deep fake images proliferating on the internet are of women and are sexual in nature and without a person's consent.

So the idea that somebody could grab your image and essentially force you into a pornographic video without your consent and that that image would be so lifelike that the viewer be unable to tell the difference between a real image and a fake I image caused me significant alarm.

- With your background in, in civil law, you're chair of the Civil Judiciary Committee in the Illinois House, you've also passed legislation dealing with a civil liability act for the practice of doxxing, which is a whole different area that causes widespread harm to people.

- Yeah, so doxxing for people who are unfamiliar is the practice where somebody puts out personally identifiable information onto the internet with essentially the goal of crowdsourcing hate and harassment.

So the idea here is not that it would be for a legitimate protest or to let people know where to come for an event, but that that information was published with the specific intent of causing that individual harm.

We've seen this done in the case of jurors, I think we've seen this done in cases where the intent is to harass and to cause a severe form of threat, right, that might result in actual bodily injury.

So the idea here is to crack down in this practice where it could cause somebody to actually experience stalking, harassment, and serious forms of harm.

- We've got about a half a minute left.

You're also working in the broader realm of the impact of artificial intelligence and how it applies to privacy and how it deals with the public at large.

- Yeah, well Illinois, I'm proud to say, has been a leader in protecting privacy rights with respect to biometric data and I think we need to continue to lead.

It's really important that we not see a situation where we have the wild wild west for AI like we did with social media and so we're working to make sure that we continue to lead here in Illinois and protect people's image and privacy.

- Interesting topic and we can go into this a lot more at another date, certainly wanna hear more about it.

State Representative Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz of Glenview.

Thank you so much for taking some time out on what is a busy day at the Illinois State Capitol.

- Well thank you for having me.

- Up next on "Illinois Lawmakers," we're talking with House Republican Leader Tony McCombie of Savannah.

Leader, good to have you back on the program.

- Thanks, thanks for having me.

- We're talking on the Tuesday afternoon of the last week of veto session.

What dominates your agenda here in the next few hours?

- Well, it's gonna continue on that we had all session long shared priorities of Invest in Kids and removal of the moratorium on the nuke bill.

- The Invest in Kids issue was big during the spring session for Republicans.

Democrats are also coming along on that as well.

What's at the heart of the Invest in Kids program for our viewers and listeners?

- Well, we are approaching the sunset and that's why it is extremely important that it's handled during veto session.

Like most big ticket items, it becomes political football, which is really unfortunate because it's about kids and kids' education and we're at the end of its time and so there is a legislation out there now, a Dem is carrying it.

Representative Guerrero is carrying the bill now that actually make some changes to the program.

that would be, I would think, a win for the Democrats to make some changes to it but it seems to be that it's still not enough to get enough votes to, to bring it forward, so I think there's probably more of a positive push in the Senate, but here in the House, it just doesn't seem to be taking off, so I'm not overly optimistic, but we have 40 out of 118 and that's a pretty big imbalance here, so we have to let the Dems decide of what their priorities are, but it is a shared priority and I think some of the changes that have been made are a pushback, but I think having parents being able to choose, especially for areas where kids are underserved and don't have opportunities, I think a lot of people around the state don't realize, especially in Chicago, how the public school system works and if they were really aware, they would be surprised and would maybe be more open to this, so we in a lot of our areas don't have choice.

so working on our public schools work is certainly an issue, but the changes that were made, I think were valid and the advocates are supporting it, so that's one of our hopes.

- When it comes to ending the nuclear moratorium, that's been on the books for decades now to stop the construction of the big nuclear power plants that have caused rate increases for a lot of consumers over the years, but that's not what we're talking about in Senator Sue Resin's bill.

She has a bill that she has refined and narrowed down.

She's talking about the small modular reactors that can be used to power power plants and things like that or power industrial complexes, things like that.

- That's correct and the Governor's veto, he stated an amendatory because of how vast that bill was.

So he stated if the bill was revised that he would sign it and I hope that he's truthful in saying that.

The legislation and the thought process of going green, shutting down coal, especially in southern Illinois, has made this necessary.

We have to have affordable and reliable and sustainable energy and this is how we're gonna be able to do that.

So it is imperative that this bill passes - And there's some buy-in on the Democratic side.

I'm reading that the Senate president, the Oak Park Democrat, Don Harmon, has been working with Senator Resin to come up with this final version of the bill that they think may be able to pass muster in both houses.

- Oh yeah, this was a bipartisan bicameral, there was Republicans and Democrats.

It was a very strong supported bill even in this format, so it will certainly pass if it comes forward.

- House Republican leader, Tony McCombie of Savannah.

Thank you so much for your time on "Illinois Lawmakers."

- Thank you.

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