|
IOWA
GOVERNOR ENDS EMERGENCY POWERS
Illinois Policy Institute/
Patrick Andriesen
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said after two years
of COVID-19 mitigations and a sharp decline in rates, she believes
Iowans will make the safe choices without laws forcing them. Pritzker
does not share that confidence in Illinoisans.
|
|
 Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced she will lift her state’s
emergency public health disaster status on Feb. 15, joining the 24 other
governors nationwide who have allowed COVID-19 emergency orders to expire as the
pandemic wanes.
Reynolds said in a statement that Iowa cannot continue to treat COVID-19 as a
public health emergency indefinitely. She believes Iowans will make the right
choices for themselves and their communities.
“After two years, it’s no longer feasible or necessary,” she said. “The flu and
other infectious illnesses are part of our everyday lives, and coronavirus can
be managed similarly.”
Iowa now joins the majority of Midwest states no longer operating under pandemic
emergency rule. In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker offered no end in sight to his
statewide pandemic protocols, despite a rapid decline in COVID-19 metrics
statewide.
Pritzker issued his 23rd state disaster proclamation Jan. 7, again extending his
executive emergency powers over state operations. At the end of this 30-day
period, Illinois will have been declared a pandemic disaster for 727 consecutive
days.
[to top of second column] |
Using these emergency powers, the governor has been
able to circumvent deliberation in the General Assembly by signing
executive orders temporarily into law and reissuing these mandates
monthly. Pritzker has issued over 100 executive health orders in the
name of combatting the pandemic – but as COVID rates sharply
decline, questions about when he will yield that power back to
elected officials remains.
When asked Jan. 19 what threshold for COVID metrics
Illinois would need to reach for Pritzker to lift mitigations, he
dodged the question, redirecting it to the state’s top doctor. She
said Illinoisans would know when the governor had a plan.
Previous attempts by news media to ask Pritzker the same question
were met with similarly vague responses.
“There’s always something that we need to be monitoring about this
pandemic because as you’ve seen that even though we have vaccines
available there is a good number of people in our population who are
not yet vaccinated,” Pritzker said July 26 to Illinois Capitol News.
“What’s important is to keep the people of Illinois healthy and
safe, and that’s making sure people get vaccinated,” he said.
Almost two years under pandemic mitigations have yet to give
Pritzker the control he wants over the population and its response
to COVID-19. How much more time will be required to change that is a
mystery Iowa’s governor has solved. |
