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Op-Ed: Illinois should join neighbor
states, limit Pritzker’s emergency powers
By Joe Tabor | Illinois Policy Institute
March marked two years
since Gov. J.B. Pritzker first declared a state of emergency as the
COVID-19 pandemic hit Illinois. In that time, Pritzker has extended his
emergency powers 26 times, acting alone when imposing emergency policies
that have lasting effects on Illinoisians.
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 Weddings have been postponed, businesses permanently closed and
livelihoods destroyed in the time Pritzker issued 112 emergency executive
orders.
Pritzker’s use of emergency powers made sense at the beginning of the pandemic,
but after two years it is time to restore checks and balances on Illinois’
executive branch. Other state legislatures have limited executive emergency
powers. The Illinois General Assembly should do so as well.
Emergency powers are granted to governors in times of dire
need, such as when the country is grappling with a deadly disease. They allow
governors to act quickly, rather than awaiting a legislature that is designed to
be slow and deliberative.
Currently, the only limit on the governor’s authority comes from the Illinois
Emergency Management Agency Act, which limits Pritzker’s disaster proclamations
to 30 days. But Pritzker has renewed his emergency powers 26 times after prior
proclamations expired – seeking neither approval nor input from the General
Assembly.
The governor’s most recent executive order came on March 4, 2022. But while
governors declared a state of emergency in all 50 states following the outbreak
of COVID-19 in 2020, many legislatures began to roll back emergency powers as
the pandemic progressed. In fact, most states in the Midwest no longer live
under a state of emergency.
 Even if it wanted to, the Illinois state legislature cannot currently limit the
governor’s extension of emergency powers without either cooperation from the
governor or a veto-proof majority. But other states serve as examples for how
Illinois could fix this. At least 34 states have some sort of legislative check in place for the duration
of emergency executive powers. Twenty-two states empower state lawmakers to end
a state of emergency by resolution at any time, while 12 states require state
legislatures to approve any extension of emergency declarations. Looking to Illinois’ neighbors, Ohio passed a
measure to establish legislative oversight of the executive branch’s
use of emergency powers in 2021, and Michigan recently repealed the
state statute authorizing emergency executive powers.
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Illinois should follow the lead of the majority of
states and give the General Assembly the power to place limits on
the duration of emergency executive powers.
The governor is not a king. No one person should be
able to unilaterally extend emergency powers to indefinitely bypass
the normal process of legislation. At some point, policy responses
must involve the legislative and executive branches working
together.
Legislators are more directly accountable to their constituents than
statewide officials, and those constituents deserve to be
represented in the response to COVID-19 – or to the next emergency.
A governor’s emergency powers need to expire. The governor alone
should not decide when that is. As the COVID-19 emergency winds
down, now is the time to think about reforming executive emergency
powers.
Extending emergency powers should require the approval of a majority
of lawmakers in each chamber of the Illinois General Assembly. At
the least, the General Assembly should be given authority to end a
state of emergency by passing a joint resolution of both chambers.
A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate last month would amend
the Illinois Emergency Management Agency Act to require the governor
to get the General Assembly’s approval to extend his emergency
powers after 30 days.
Emergency executive powers can be a necessary aspect of governing in
times of crisis. But powers meant to deal with a disaster cannot be
allowed to go on forever, especially not on the say-so of one man.
Joe Tabor is a senior policy analyst at the Illinois
Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization.
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