THE ILLINOIZE: Thursday Free for All...Pritzker on the end of pandemic emergency...Gov signs first responder COVID disability bill into law...More confusion over assault weapon ban
May 11, 2023
Good morning, Illinois.
The clock is ticking. There are eight days left in the spring legislative session and today is the official end of the state’s pandemic emergency after more than three years. How are you celebrating?
The House and Senate are in at 11:30. The Governor honors public health and health care workers at 9am in Springfield.
I hope you’ve been enjoying our free “Free for All” Monday and Thursday emails. But the good stuff comes in subscriber-only e-mails on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. And there will be lots to come in the next week. Join us, will you?
Let’s get to it.
YOUR THURSDAY FREE FOR ALL
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Pritzker reflects on three years of pandemic as disaster declarations are set to end (Capitol News Illinois)
In the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. JB Pritzker recalls being handed a report from researchers at the University of Illinois.
The analysis was written by scientists and mathematicians who were trying to estimate how many deaths and hospitalizations would occur under different scenarios – one if the state took no action; another if it imposed only moderate mitigation measures; and yet another if it imposed significant measures such as a stay-at-home order.
“And without any mitigations, their projection was, just in the Chicago area alone, we would see 40,000 deaths in approximately four months,” Pritzker recalled in an interview this week.
He said he still keeps a copy of that report in his office.
On March 9, 2020, Pritzker issued his first statewide disaster declaration related to COVID-19, a declaration he would go on to renew every 30 days for more than three years. In the following days, he would issue executive orders closing schools to in-person attendance, then closing bars and restaurants and, eventually, a general stay-at-home order that would shutter all “nonessential” businesses for months to come.
By summer 2020, the state began to gradually roll back many of the mitigation orders on a region-by-region basis and by the end of the year, the first vaccines became publicly available.
Throughout 2021, new variants of the virus would emerge, leading to temporary spikes in COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths. But as the vaccines became more widely distributed, the death and hospitalization rates started falling steadily, and in 2022 Pritzker began phasing out many of mitigation orders that had been in place.
Pritzker maintains that as a result of those measures, Illinois avoided the direst predictions of the mathematicians and scientists at the University of Illinois. According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, as of April 30, the entire state of Illinois has seen 36,850 confirmed COVID-19 deaths, and another 5,155 “probable” disease-related deaths.
“But if one were to look at how Illinois handled the pandemic – and this is kudos and gratitude to the people of Illinois – people did the right thing,” Pritzker said. “And the vast majority of people in Illinois understood what they needed to do. They heard what they needed to do from the experts, and they did it.”
Not even an admission from the Governor that he kept schools closed too long. It’s an alarming lack of self-awareness.
Pritzker signs law that gives benefits to Chicago first responders disabled by COVID (Associated Press)
Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday signed a law providing full disability benefits to Chicago police officers and firefighters struck by COVID-19 before vaccines were available, presiding over an emotional statehouse ceremony which marked the end of a financial struggle for responders including the brother of Comptroller Susana Mendoza.
The Act-of-Duty law, HB3162, ensures disability benefits of 75% of salary plus health insurance for anyone unable to work after contracting the coronavirus from March 9, 2020, when the flare-up intensified in Illinois, until June 30, 2021. The law grants them the presumption that they picked up the illness on the job.
Pritzker said after COVID-19′s arrival in early 2020, police, fire and medical personnel were both a line of defense and a lifeline.
“Our first responders were key to our national response, transporting infected patients to hospitals, disbursing masks and testing kits or providing care to those in distress...,” Pritzker said. “But even with social distancing, masks and mitigations in place, many of our first responders became infected with COVID-19.”
Mendoza’s brother, 58-year-old police Det. Joaquin Mendoza, was a veteran officer who worked the midnight shift. With no spouse or children, the comptroller said work was his only focus. In November 2020, when the city canceled days off, he worked 17 straight days, woke up one morning with a cough and two days later was rushed to the hospital with COVID-19.
The fact the city put these first responders in this situation is shameful.
Related: Gov. J.B. Pritzker signs bill to provide benefits for Chicago first responders disabled by COVID-19 (Chicago Tribune)
Pritzker signs bill guaranteeing disability pay to first responders who contracted COVID-19 (Chicago Sun-Times)
Gov. Pritzker signs comptroller-backed disability compensation bill (State Journal-Register)
GOP lawmakers say lack of guidance from attorney general puts gun buyers in legal jeopardy (Chicago Tribune)
A group of Republican state lawmakers said Wednesday that a lack of guidance from the Illinois attorney general’s office after a federal court in southern Illinois temporarily put the state’s sweeping gun ban on hold late last month has left residents who bought high-powered firearms prohibited under the law in legal jeopardy.
Gun shops across the state late last month resumed selling high-powered semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines subject to the ban after a federal judge in the Southern District of Illinois issued an injunction April 28 blocking enforcement of the law. That decision was reversed six days later by the Chicago-based U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously had declined to block the law in a separate case.
Guidance has since been posted to the Illinois State Police website that says purchases made during the six days the injunction was in place remain subject to the ban.
That means sellers can’t deliver guns and magazines that were ordered during that time period, and buyers who already received their purchases cannot legally possess them.
“The attorney general had an opportunity to urge caution and express the consequences of what may or may not happen down the road to people that are exercising their constitutional right during that six-day period of time, but he neglected to do it,” GOP state Sen. Jason Plummer of Edwardsville said Wednesday during a statehouse news conference. “Now, today, the attorney general is saying that those transactions were illegal.”
Plummer accused Raoul and Pritzker of engaging in “an intentional effort ... to entrap Illinoisans, law-abiding citizens, and turn them into felons.”
A spokeswoman for Raoul’s office pushed back, saying in a statement: “Any insinuation that the attorney general’s office would intentionally mislead or ‘entrap’ law-abiding Illinois residents is, at best, laughable. At worst, it is dangerous.”
Related: U.S. Supreme Court justice considering action on Illinois’ assault weapons ban (Capitol News Illinois)
SOME TOP LINKS FROM THE WEEK SO FAR
Rep. Mary Flowers Removed from House Leadership, Banned From Caucus Meetings
Illinois GOP to Weigh Making Endorsements in Statewide Primaries
POLITICAL POTPOURRI
As many Illinoisans struggle with food access, lawmakers consider state grants for grocers (Capitol News Illinois)
Springfield progressives push to impose a wealth tax (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Critics of the draft voting map for Chicago’s elected school board want a do-over (WBEZ)
Lawmakers look to end ‘common carrier’ exemption for ride-share companies (Capitol News Illinois)
Quinn joins discussion over Illinois ethics laws (Associated Press)
Amended Native American repatriation measure heads to full Senate (Capitol News Illinois)
A former Illinois State Senator convicted in corruption scheme gets a new job — state lobbyist (WBEZ)
Remember that credit on your ComEd bill last summer? They want it back — with interest. (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Lawyers for 2 convicted in ComEd bribery trial ask for permission to speak to jurors (Chicago Sun-Times)
Illinois isn’t reimbursing allegedly stolen SNAP benefits (WBEZ)
Editorial: Be wary of lifting moratorium on new Illinois nuclear plants (Chicago Sun-Times)
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