Will County Gazette

Veteran state Rep. Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield) is convinced timing is of essence in the state’s battle to rebound from the crippling coronavirus crisis.

“We need to be having conversations now about when and how we reopen our economy before it’s too late,” Batinick told the Will County Gazette. “We’re learning more about the virus every day, things like how it spreads and how to mitigate it, and the governor needs to be taking all that data into consideration when it comes to his restrictions. I don’t think it has to be an all-or-nothing situation.”

Batinick isn’t alone in his assessment, as GOP colleagues Brad Halbrook of Shelbyville and Chris Miller of Oakland recently fired off a letter to Pritzker where they called on him to “present a plan for bringing businesses back online.”

In doing so, Halbrook pointed to how projections for the number of deaths expected to be caused from the virus have dropped from a one-time high of 2.5 million to around 60,000.  

“That says that there’s room for the governor to be making adjustments,” Batinick said.

While all three of the GOP legislators insist they understand and agree with the governor’s concern about keeping the people of the state safe from the disease, Batinick argues that’s only half of the equation.

“My biggest worry is that poverty kills people too,” he said. “Right now, our economy is almost completely shut down and the less we have for the state budget, the less we’ll have for social services, which have bad outcomes. We need some kind of metric or guideline that gives people something to as they struggle through a crisis the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”