Will County Gazette

Republican House Floor Leader Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield) is convinced most voters stand with him when it comes to his opposition to amendments being made to the Health Care Right of Conscience Act.

Whereas people refusing COVID mandates such as masking and vaccinations have cited the law as legal justification for their actions, the amendment would give employers more leeway to enforce COVID mandates.

The measure was passed by the Illinois House and it now heads to the Senate.

“Yesterday evening, I spoke on an amendment to the Health Care Right of Conscience Act,” Batinick recently posted on Facebook. “There were 50,000 witness slips filed because we haven't been debating these nuances in the legislature.”

The legislation was initially  intended to protect doctors from being forced to perform medical procedures that they stand morally opposed to, namely abortions. But now it's used as an argument to  protest mask and vaccine mandates.

Batinick argues the law should not be amended.

“We should not have taken this last hope from our constituents,” he said.

Batinick has also been pushing to bring what he deems to be “real ethics reform” to Springfield.

“I don’t know what it is going to take for the General Assembly to take this seriously,” he said in a post to Facebook. “I’ve filed several bills that the majority party never lets move. It is seriously frustrating.”

Legislative Inspector General (LIG) Carol Pope recently stepped down from her position, citing a lack of commitment to the level of change she felt was needed.  

With her resignation slated to become official on Dec. 15, Pope said she is no fan of Senate Bill 539, which seeks to prohibit the LIG from launching an investigation based solely on public allegations raised in the news media.

With a recent University of Illinois at Chicago survey concluding that the state stands as the second most corrupt in the country at an annual cost to taxpayers of more than $550 million, Batinick recently called for major change.

"There's an overarching yet constantly ignored need for change and reform in Illinois,” he said during a recent news conference. “We saw in November when voters overwhelmingly said stop trying to raise taxes to fix the problems the general assembly created. We see it every day when our friends, family, neighbors continue to leave Illinois for states with more opportunity and an honest government.”

More recently, Batinick has thrown his support behind a bill that would allow for the recall of state leaders. HJRCA 4 would provide for the recall of all state executive branch officers, legislative leaders, the Auditor General, members of the General Assembly and local government officials.

"This isn’t about one office or one person; it’s about a culture of corruption that's been throughout the state and local government in Illinois. We have a 60% threshold in this legislation in the house that is HJRCA 4," Batinick said during a news conference. "This shouldn’t be a situation where you see the president's popularity go above and below 50% all the time. There has to be a supermajority of people that say that person needs to be removed from office."