Economy vs. epidemiology? Pritzker gears reopening to science and saving lives – but business leaders call plan ‘misguided’

Cafe Tola at 600 N. LaSalle on Thursday. Many restaurants in Chicago have had to close or modify their business model to amid the coronavirus pandemic. | Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times file

Gov. J.B. Pritzker says he’s saving lives with his plan to gradually reopen parts of the Illinois economy, but business leaders say it’s costing the livelihoods of more than a million residents left jobless by the coronavirus shutdown.

As state officials announced another unprecedented flood of claims for unemployment benefits Thursday, the Illinois Chamber of Commerce slammed Pritzker’s phased reopening plan as “misguided.”

“Illinois cannot afford to outsource the future of our economy to a handful of epidemiologists without considering the financial future of families,” chamber president and CEO Todd Maisch said in a statement. “Government leaders must be able to address the public health crisis and the economic crisis at the same time. Otherwise it is failing us.”

The Illinois Department of Employment Security processed more claims during the first month of the pandemic than it did during all of last year — and that number nearly doubled in the second month of the crisis, Pritzker said.

The state has now handled more than a million jobless claims over the first nine weeks of the shutdown, more than five times the number filed at the beginning of the 2008 recession, Pritzker said.

The Disney Store on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile has its windows boarded up in late March amid the coronavirus shutdown.

“The devastation this pandemic has wreaked upon our economy, the economy of the United States and that of the world is mind-boggling,” Pritzker said. “The swiftness and immediacy of its economic impact has never been seen before: businesses — large and small — have shuttered, families who’ve had their savings wiped out, workers who have worked every day of their adult lives have found themselves on unemployment.”

But the state Chamber of Commerce says Illinois’ staggering jobless figure “reaffirms the inadequacy” of the plan Pritzker released earlier this week, which splits the state into four regions and allows each to slowly reopen along a five-phase plan by meeting certain medical benchmarks.

The state currently is at Phase 2, and to advance to Phase 3 — which allows some shuttered businesses like salons to reopen — “a region must show declines in coronavirus test positivity rates and hospital admissions.”

But there aren’t any specific time frames, and while it may be “a well-intended response,” it’s not fast enough, Maisch said.

“Undisclosed epidemiological standards applied to arbitrary geographical boundaries should not keep people from earning a living,” he said. “We believe that statewide reopening safety protocols for all places of business are necessary and equitable.

Masich wants clearance for businesses “that can reopen and rehire safely” to do so.

“The statewide protocols should apply as equally to an employer on the west side of Chicago as they should to an employer in DuPage or Effingham Counties,” he said.

Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said the governor “understands the desire to open up sectors of our economy as quickly as possible because he shares that same sense of urgency, but the state’s five phase plan was put together by health experts and lays groundwork for how we move forward with a new normal.

“From day one, the Governor has relied on science and data to drive the response to this deadly virus and staying on this course will continue to save lives.”

More than 3,100 people have died of COVID-19 so far while more than 70,000 have been infected statewide. Pritzker has said his stay-at-home measures — in effect through May 30 — have kept those numbers from ballooning to levels that would overwhelm the state’s hospitals.

More than a hundred vehicles circle City Hall and the Thompson Center in the Loop as protesters honk their horns and rally for a range of issues, such as universal health care and immigration reform, during the coronavirus pandemic, Thursday afternoon.

The historic jobless claims have led to a historic state payout of more than $2 billion in the first four months of the year, which is half a billion more than was paid out all of last year, Pritzker said.

The crush of filers crashed the Employment Security office’s online filing system at the onset of the pandemic, and while many have complained they’re still not able to get through the swamped system, Pritzker said a new call center, a bolstered computer system and 100 more agents are improving the agency’s “capability to meet the increased need as quickly as possible.”

“In many ways, they’ve been forced to build a new airplane, while flying it over the last two months,” Pritzker said.

Starting Monday, the agency will begin processing claims for so-called “1099 workers,” including independent contractors such as ride-share drivers, according to the state.