Rep. Amy Grant (R-Wheaton) | https://repgrant.com/
Rep. Amy Grant (R-Wheaton) | https://repgrant.com/
State Rep. Amy Grant (R-Wheaton) is desperately hoping the state can get back to some level of normalcy sometime over the next several weeks.
“I think we should continue to try to flatten the curve to the point where we can start to reopen our businesses, hopefully by sometime in May,” Grant told the DuPage Policy Journal. “I think that would be a best-case scenario and I know it’s what a lot of people are hoping for.”
Grant fears what things may look like otherwise.
“We can’t afford it as a state,” she said of the COVID-19 crisis that has caused most businesses to shutter. “I don’t think there’s any way the state can continue to pay the levels of unemployment that we are right now.”
Grant points to a WalletHub.com survey that finds Illinois ranks near the top of state economies most vulnerable to the coronavirus crisis as further proof of that. Researchers point out the cash-strapped state has no rainy day fund to speak of and is now home to the lowest share of workers in the country with access to paid sick leave.
“There’s no talk of any of that,” Grant said. “Gov. (J.B.) Pritzker is just doing things as if this huge unfunding of liabilities and massive property tax hole don’t exist. We were definitely on shaky ground and worse off than most other states before any of this started.”
Grant said she gets the impression the governor is now hoping to make it all go away via some kind of bailout from the federal government.
“Even as he regularly makes fun of the president and attacks, that's what it sounds like to me,” she said.
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