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 While Pritzker insisted Illinois was a long way from
reinstituting those restrictions, he said new mitigations policies would look
different than what he ordered in spring 2020. That includes reassessing
pandemic policies that favored big box grocery stores and retailers as thousands
of Illinois’ small businesses were forced to close their doors.
“When you walk into a Walmart, in addition to there being a grocery store,
there’s also other things that you could buy. And so I think, certainly in
retrospect now, I think what we would say is, ‘If you could have kept the
capacity limit appropriate in a smaller venue, it might have kept that open,’”
Pritzker said.
Admitting to that mistake comes months too late for the 39% of Illinois
businesses that never reopened when the state lifted COVID-19 mitigations in
June. The casualty list includes more than half of the state’s food,
accommodation, and hospitality and leisure small businesses lost since January
2020.
“But we were following, in a very unknown environment, with a new coronavirus –
the federal government was essentially saying to us, ‘You need to keep these
things open and you need to close the other things,’” Pritzker said.
Retailers were not the only businesses to see uneven treatment or on-again,
off-again restrictions. Dave Halpern, who co-founded a group of bars as 4
Entertainment Group in Glenview, Illinois, said a lot of sleepless nights led to
his businesses’ survival.
“Our industry has been treated as a scapegoat,” Halpern said. “There was no
science that suggested that bars and restaurants that were following safe
distancing and mask mandates were more dangerous than family gatherings or house
parties with no restrictions.”
Pritzker said the state is reconsidering shutdown policies as the nation again
sees COVID-19 infection rates and hospitalizations on the rise. Pritzker’s
primary concern is for Illinois counties neighboring Missouri, which reported a
state positivity rate of 17.43% on July 20.
“Missouri is… the worst state in the nation right now,” Pritzker said. “And it’s
right on our border. And (COVID-19) is pouring over, unfortunately, across the
border into Metro East and southern Illinois.”
As Pritzker eyes potential mitigations for counties on the state border,
Republican governors in states such as Florida are explicitly ruling out another
round of coronavirus closures. Pritzker argues Illinois’ top-down strategy
provides a more measured approach.
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“There were people last summer who thought we
should rule out, you know, additional mitigation… and you saw what
happened in October, November, December. I mean it was worse than it
was in April and May.”
Pritzker’s reevaluation of the state restrictions
he implemented during the pandemic came after announcing his bid for
re-election in the Nov. 8, 2022, general election.
Several potential Republican challengers for governor have made it
clear Illinois’ handling of the novel coronavirus and continued
mitigations will be a central issue in the upcoming election. In
particular, the impact those policies had on residents and the
state’s fiscal health.
More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment in
Illinois continues to trail the national average at 7.2%. The state
has recovered just half of the more than 800,000 jobs lost since the
onset of the coronavirus.
Consequently, Illinois has led the Midwest as the worst state for
job growth since the recovery began.
Pritzker compounded on the plight of Illinois’ unemployed after
twice passing Illinois’ 2022 state budget that includes four of the
governor’s nine new taxes and fees, totaling $655 million and
targeting job creators. The Illinois Policy Institute’s chief
economist, Orphe Divounguy, predicted these taxes will reduce
investment and hurt job creation efforts by removing key tax
incentives and deductions.
“As Illinois businesses take an important step forward by being
allowed to reopen, cash-strapped business taxpayers face higher
taxes. Those taxes will make it harder to raise wages or invest and
bring back workers,” Divounguy said.
“The new taxes in the budget – the treatment of net operating losses
and rolling back bonus depreciation – will raise the pretax return
businesses require to pursue investment opportunities, reducing the
number of projects they’ll find worthwhile. By raising the cost of
investment, we’re shrinking the number of available opportunities
for over 400,000 job seekers.”
Pritzker has reassured Illinoisans that a new round of COVID-19
shutdowns are a long way away for the state. Still, the lessons of
the pandemic and Pritzker’s top-down, one-size-fit-all policies have
yet to be fully learned by the sitting governor.
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