Illinois Rep. Michael Zalewski, a Riverside Democrat and co-chair of the House economic recovery working group, said one of the most pressing tasks – one that he said state government has little control over – will be getting the state’s economy up and running again, which he said could take a very long time.
“I think it’s going to be slower than many people would desire,” he said. “I think that we’re going to need a lot of economic stimulus from the federal government because they have the ability to inject immediate capital into the economy. Our ability to inject capital is far less available. What we’re able to do is promote specific policy proposals that, down the line, could produce economic activity.”
Republicans have recently called for a strategic reopening of sectors of the economy in the coming days, and Gov. JB Pritzker has hinted at changes to his stay-at-home order, which is scheduled to end April 30.
Senate Minority Leader Bill Brady, a Bloomington Republican, said in a phone call he would like to see the data Pritzker is relying upon so it could inform a regionalized approach to opening some businesses. He specifically pointed to hospitals that indicate they can reopen for certain procedures while still handling COVID-19 cases.
He said data may indicate some areas are ready for openings sooner than others.
“We need to plan for that,” he said. “We need to tell the people of Illinois what the benchmarks are.”
A group of House Republicans on Wednesday called on the governor to allow hospitals to resume performing cancer screenings and other kinds of elective procedures, to allow many retail establishments to reopen provided they follow safety guidelines, and to reopen state parks.
Rep. Ryan Spain, R-Peoria, said during a video news conference that the stay-at-home order that took effect March 21 has been successful and has probably saved many lives, but he said the people of Illinois also need to get back to work.
“We’ve slowed the spread of COVID-19. We’ve bent the curve, allowing our health care workers to be more safe and better able to do their jobs,” he said. “This has been important work. We’ve all made sacrifices together because this is going to be a long process as we go forward. But now we are looking at how we go forward and how we think about economic recovery in the state of Illinois.”
During his daily COVID-19 briefing in Chicago, however, Pritzker said the state still needs more capacity to test for the disease, to trace all of the people who have come into contact with infected patients, and build up an adequate supply of personal protective equipment, or PPE, before it can reopen the economy.
“While we’re working very hard on PPE and testing and spinning up a contact tracing effort that will be very large at the end, those are three things we have to work on and we’re not there yet,” he said.
