North Cook News

Cook County Board Commissioner Sean Morrison said the cause of Illinois’ record-setting job losses in 2020 deeper than just the impact of COVID-19.

“It’s a combination of the pandemic and much deeper issues,” Morrison told the North Cook News. “As much as anything, this is about the state’s private businesses for the last 35-years having democratic policies in place that have hampered everything. We already have some of the highest taxes in the country, and on top of that, the governor’s administration has done a horrible overall job of running the state.”

The Illinois Policy Institute reported that last year as the coronavirus was expanding, the state lost at least 423,000 jobs or nearly 7% of its workforce. In Chicago, where unemployment numbers piled up the swiftest of all, rates more than tripled over a yearlong period ending in December to 8.7%.

Morrison said Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s handling of the virus crisis has made the situation worse.

“Everything the governor has done has further crippled the economy,” he said. “The shutdown of the private sector here has been much harsher than it’s been in other states. COVID is real, and clearly, people catch it, but we can’t allow that to completely shut down our state, our public schools and even our economy. All that falls on the governor and to me speaks to a failure of leadership.”

Morrison can only think of one way for the state to completely get its financial house in order and start to re-establish itself as a destination where people want to be.

“A lot of Republicans need to be elected that will not be about all the self-dealing,” he said. “I think when you have career bureaucrats that spend the majority of their time self-dealing, you’re asking for upheaval where people at some point come to have enough.”