Capital Imp Committee: Begins Drafting Policy to Regulate Artificial Intelligence in County Government

Capital Improvements & IT Committee Meeting | January 6, 2026

Article Summary:
The Will County Board Capital Improvements and IT Committee began formulating a comprehensive policy regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by county employees. Members discussed establishing strict guardrails to protect jobs, ensure data accuracy, and maintain human oversight in government operations.

AI Policy Discussion Key Points:

• Job Protection: Members emphasized that AI should complement human work, not replace county employees or eliminate jobs.

• Data Integrity: Concerns were raised regarding “hallucinations” or false data generated by AI, necessitating human verification for all official records.

• Operational Security: The committee proposed creating a physical “hard backup” of essential county documents to protect against digital manipulation or loss.

• Inventory and Authorization: A survey will be commissioned to determine which departments are currently using AI tools, with a push for requiring prior authorization for use.

The Will County Board Capital Improvements and IT Committee on Tuesday, January 6, 2026, initiated a significant discussion on creating a countywide policy to govern the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Generative AI tools.

Committee Chair Mica Freeman (D-Plainfield) led the session, utilizing research from the National Association of Counties (NACo) and the Illinois State Association of Counties to guide the conversation. The committee’s goal is to draft specific bullet points for a policy that can be reviewed by the Information Technology department next month.

A primary concern for the committee was the potential impact of AI on the county workforce. Member Mark Revis (R-Plainfield) advocated strongly for policy language that prevents AI from displacing human workers.

“I think it’s dangerous when you have a robot taking the job of a human being,” Revis said. “It’s something to complement. It’s not something to supplement.”

Member Steve Balich (R-Homer Glen) raised concerns regarding the reliability of AI-generated information, citing the potential for AI to fabricate data or alter official records. He insisted that the policy must require human-generated, permanent records for actual county data to prevent historical revisionism by algorithms.

“We have to have records for our actual real data now because how do we know that AI ain’t fudging the data?” Balich asked. “The only way this works for AI is if there are permanent accounting records by a human being.”

Member Dawn Bullock (D-Plainfield) referenced a policy model from Montgomery County, suggesting that the county needs an immediate inventory of who is using AI and for what purpose. She proposed that all use of generative AI tools should require prior authorization.

“We can’t let it completely get away from us,” Bullock said. “Just because we have access to it doesn’t mean we are saying that go ahead and use it.”

The committee directed staff to categorize the policy into three main “buckets”: Operations (inventory, parameters, disclaimers), Human Resources (job protection), and Data Security (creating hard backups of data outside the cloud network).

Mike, a representative from the executive’s office, noted that the Emergency Management Agency (EMA) is currently running a “quasi-pilot program” using a closed-source AI program to help examine federal regulation changes for planning documents. He assured the committee that “everything that we do has human eyes on it before it would ever get resubmitted.”

The committee plans to refine these points and meet with IT staff in February to formalize the draft policy.