Editor's note: This article was originally published at Wirepoints.org.
The Illinois legislature’s biggest failure during the pandemic has been its complete abdication of responsibility over the management of the pandemic itself – Gov. Pritzker has been running the state’s response via executive fiat for over a year.
The result has been a disaster for democratic norms. Lawmakers should have stepped in and authorized the governor’s emergency rules or passed their own laws at the start of the pandemic. But they did neither.
No matter their excuses, Illinois lawmakers no longer have reasons for inaction. The curve has been flattened. There’s no risk of running out of hospital beds or ICU resources. Daily cases have collapsed. And most importantly, vaccines are being rolled out at an increasing rate. Herd immunity is expected by the end of April.
Gov. Pritzker should be stripped of his powers by the legislature immediately. That’s especially true now that Pritzker has added another incremental phase to his plan instead of fast-tracking a full reopening.
Here’s why the legislature needs to retake control:
First of all, Pritzker’s yearlong control of Illinois’ COVID response has been marred by missteps and mismanagement. There’s the administration’s abject failure to protect retirement homes. The refusal to overrule unions and get kids safely back into school. The arbitrary shutdown of the economy across the state. And now the continuing botched vaccine rollout.
Second, Pritzker’s centralized, one-size-fits-all orders don’t appear to have helped against the pandemic in the first place. Illinoisans have been living under some of the strictest lockdown policies in the country and yet Illinois ranks 15th-worst nationally for COVID deaths per one million residents.
Meanwhile, many of the other states that pursued a policy of remaining more open have done better overall. Florida, the poster child for less-restrictive policies, has nearly 20 percent fewer deaths per million residents compared to Illinois.
Florida’s handling of the crisis has also done a better job not just protecting lives, but livelihoods. The state kept its economy free and reopened its schools, preserving jobs and limiting the damage of COVID. Today, Florida’s unemployment rate has fallen to less than 5 percent, far less than the national average, while Illinois’ rate is still a high 7.7 percent.
Third, all of Illinois’ indicators of the pandemic have collapsed over the past few months.
Vaccinations are now under way and, despite continued distribution problems, more than 2.6 million adult Illinoisans have gotten at least one shot. That’s about 30 percent of the adult Illinois population over the age of 20.
Plus there’s the fact that more than 1.2 million adults in Illinois have gotten COVID already. That means nearly 4 million adult Illinoisans already have some form of immunity (for sure there is some overlap between those who’ve had COVID with those recently inoculated). That’s approaching half the adult population.
Add to that the likely millions of Illinoisans who have suffered asymptomatic cases of COVID on top of that and we’ll rapidly approach herd immunity levels as the vaccination distribution process continues to improve.
Vaccination data is buttressed by the fact that COVID metrics are moving strongly in the right direction here in Illinois. Hospitalizations, deaths and daily reported cases have fallen dramatically in the last four months.
Hospitalizations are down 80 percent off of their 6,100 peak, with an average of 1,131 patients as of March 14th. Hospitalizations are now at a lower point than last year’s summer average.
Daily deaths, which peaked at a 7-day average of over 150 in December, are also declining rapidly. The 7-day average for daily deaths is now down to 28, an 80 percent decline.
And daily cases in Illinois have collapsed even more, down nearly 90 percent off their peak in November. The most recent 7-day average for cases was 1,514, way below the average of 12,000 a day just four months ago.
Jobs data is the other big reason the legislature should want to retake the reins from Pritzker over COVID. If there’s a group getting hurt most by the economic lockdown, it’s low-income populations.
The hardest hit job sector by far, leisure and hospitality, is filled with lower-income workers. Over 215,000 Illinoisans in that sector, or 34 percent, have lost their jobs.
And while Pritzker’s shutdown policies are widening the earning gaps between low- and high-income Illinoisans in the short term, it’s the shutdown of schools that’s causing long-term, irrevocable harm. Online learning has worsened the learning and earning gaps for low-income students for decades to come.
End the lockdowns
There is no reason for Illinois to have functioned under Pritzker’s emergency rules past the first 30 days of the pandemic, something Wirepoints has consistently argued since the pandemic began. Pritzker’s clockwork renewals of his emergency orders have made a mockery of the original intent of Illinois’ 30-day emergency law.
Blame former House Speaker Mike Madigan and Senate President Don Harmon if you want. Maybe they didn’t want to bear responsibility for any bad COVID outcomes, so they let the governor run the show. And what’s worse, the state’s courts have largely upheld the governor’s actions.
The good news is some lawmakers are trying to make sure Pritzker’s rule-by-fiat comes to an end. Senate minority leader Dan McConchie (R-Hawthorn Woods) and several fellow senators recently introduced a bill that would require Pritzker and all future Illinois governors to seek approval from the Illinois General Assembly each time they renew their emergency powers.
Action by the General Assembly won’t change the mismanagement that’s unfolded over the last 12 months, but it can at least set Illinois on path to recovery sooner than Pritzker’s rules would allow.