Pritzker defends tighter restrictions in Chicago in face of pushback from Lightfoot, adds Lake and McHenry counties to list of regions where indoor bar and dining banned
A day after Mayor Lori Lightfoot indicated she would try to change Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s mind about shutting down indoor dining and bar service in Chicago later this week, the governor reiterated that the restrictions will take effect in the city Friday, as planned.
“We have now a COVID storm that’s hit the entire country, frankly, I think there’s nobody that could turn on a television set, watch news, without seeing that it’s happening everywhere, and it’s happening across the state of Illinois. Chicago hasn’t been immune from that,” Pritzker said Wednesday at an unrelated news conference in Chicago.
“So as I announced yesterday, the same mitigations that went in place for other areas of the state that have tripped those metrics, where we’ve got people getting sick and going into the hospital … we’ve imposed the same sets of mitigations and we’ll be doing that for the city of Chicago," he said.
Also Tuesday, the state said Lake and McHenry counties will become the 8th of 11 regions in Pritzker’s reopening plan where coronavirus metrics have exceeded state thresholds, leading to tighter restrictions. Indoor bar and dining service will be banned in those counties beginning Saturday after the average positivity rate exceeded 8% for three consecutive days, the governor’s office said.
Pritzker’s administration has reimposed tougher restrictions in regions from suburban Cook County to southern Illinois when they’ve reached state-set thresholds indicating a resurgence of the coronavirus.
In the face of growing criticism, he defended those measures on Wednesday as being “effective," citing two regions where the state tightened rules and the COVID-19 test positivity rate then dropped to a level where indoor dining and bar service could resume.
Pritzker announced tighter restrictions for Chicago, which in addition to ending indoor dining and bar service starting Friday would cap crowds at 25, on Tuesday.
Hours later, Lightfoot pushed back in an interview on PBS News Hour, saying that “our restaurant industry, our bars, our gyms, indoor spaces, if the governor’s order goes into effect, it’s really effectively shutting down a significant portion of our economy at a time when those same businesses are really hanging on by a thread, so we’re going to continue our engagement with the governor and his team.”
Before that interview, Lightfoot issued a statement that began “Communication is the key to navigating through this crisis.”
Pritzker’s office acknowledged he had not spoken with the mayor before issuing his order on Tuesday, and said in a statement “The governor and mayor were supposed to speak on Monday, but the mayor didn’t call the governor. Staff were briefed on the metrics triggering mitigations.”
Despite their clash on Tuesday over Pritzker announcing tighter rules would take effect in Chicago starting at 12:01 a.m. Friday, Pritzker on Wednesday publicly described the two as having a “good relationship,” and said they communicate regularly.
“We speak regularly, and I think that we’re both dedicated to the same thing, which is we want to keep people safe and healthy, and we want to keep the economy going while this virus is ravaging so many people,” Pritzker said. “And so, everything is a balance here, but I set out metrics for each region in the state, they’re the same across the board.”
The only regions where the state has not yet introduced firmer rules are the three central Illinois regions, though those areas have all had climbing positivity rates, too.
For the first time on Tuesday, the state reported the west-central Illinois region that includes Springfield, had reached an 8% positivity rate. If its rate stays at that level or rises for two more days, it would trigger the stricter measures in Pritzker’s reopening plan, too.
jmunks@chicagotribune.com
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