Peoria Standard

State Sen. Jil Tracy (R-Quincy) said Gov. J.B. Pritzker continues to make a bad situation worse with his handling of the COVID-19 crisis.

“Gov. Pritzker issued more executive orders last week, continuing his year-and-a-half long streak of unilaterally controlling the state’s response to COVID-19,” Tracy said in her Week in Review posted to Facebook. “As of Sept. 23, the Governor has issued more than 90 Executive Orders.”

Tracy argues some of Pritzker’s orders have clearly backfired, pointing to the way one of his vaccination mandates for congregate workers was instituted before negotiating with the employees, forcing the governor to include a delay for the requirement in one of his Executive Orders.

“Gov. Pritzker has been forced to extend the deadline for state employees in congregate facilities to be vaccinated,” she added. “The delay is due to the fact that the Governor had issued the vaccination requirement before negotiating a solution with unions representing the workers, a necessary step before implementing that type of mandate.”

State employees at state-owned or state-operated congregate facilities now have until at least Oct. 14 to get vaccinated, while staffers at facilities such as Corrections and long-term care still have a deadline of Oct. 4.

Around the same time, Tracy argues the governor put in place a vaccine-or-test mandate for schools before Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) officials had so much as released guidance on the policy.

School officials have raised issue with the governor’s stream of mandates, which critics charge have left districts powerless in having a voice about their own direction.

Recently, dozens of school administrators came together to write a Peoria Journal Star op-ed where they blasted the governor’s approach as “an incremental dismantling of local control in public education.”

Executive Order 2021-23 also contained an Oct. 3 expiration date of the governor’s much debated moratorium on residential evictions.

After extending his original March 2020 Executive Order, the governor’s new mandate now allows for court proceedings, though law enforcement is still banned from executing evictions.

With most tenants considered “covered,” evictions are only allowed in health and safety circumstances, for tenants who refuse to fill out paperwork for assistance, cannot provide proof of hardships due to the pandemic or those who earn an income of more than $99,000 individually or $198,000 jointly.