Galesburg Reporter

According to Republican state Sen. Jil Tracy, the more things change the more they stay the same with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

“Gov. J.B. 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. Because Gov. Pritzker ordered a vaccination mandate for congregate workers before negotiating with the employees, he was forced to include a delay for the requirement in one of his executive orders.”

Tracy also notes the same order included an Oct. 3 expiration date of the governor’s much-debated moratorium on residential evictions.

And schools are faring no better, Tracy says in the post.

“In what has become a seemingly common practice during the COVID-19 era,  one of Gov. Pritzker’s recent executive orders created new mandates for Illinois schools with little of the necessary information on how the schools should move forward. In this case, Pritzker ordered schools to follow a rigid vaccinate-or-test mandate with a deadline of Sept.19. The Illinois State Board of Education finally released guidance on the new mandate on Sept. 22, two days after the deadline for compliance."

Tracy has also spoken out against the clean energy act that was signed last month.

“The one thing Illinois has had going for it for years is reliable and affordable, most of all affordable, energy,” Tracy said in a video posted to YouTube. “When we recruit businesses to come to Illinois, that was one of the first things we could mention is that we have affordable, reliable energy for them. Illinois has been an exporter of energy rather than an importer.”

Tracy worries that could all go up in smoke with Pritzker’s approval of a measure he has touted as “transformative” in seeking to shift state energy policy in the direction of renewable energy sources and away from a reliance on fossil fuels.