Karen Tucker wonders if Illinois can ever be the state she fondly remembers.
"We've been on the wrong track for a while now, then COVID hit and took things to a whole new low," the Franklin County activist told the North Egypt News. "Right now, the governor's actions are crippling all our small businesses, and all the larger companies are moving out of Illinois the first chance they get."
In the face of all the growing pandemic, Illinois Policy Institute reported the state lost its most jobs in history in 2020 at approximately 423,000 or roughly 7% of the workforce. While more in-depth review shows many of the losses were spread across the state's metropolitan area, nowhere was the decline more pronounced than in Chicago. Unemployment in the Windy City more than tripled over a yearlong period ending in December 2020 to 8.7%
Tucker said she sees just one way to end the malaise.
"In order to revitalize the state and our economy, we need to make our business environment more friendly," she said. "Ordinarily, that would mean coming up with incentives that could help entice big businesses to set up shop here. Our problem is we're in such a bad place right now we can't even pay the bills we already have."
Tucker said she places much of the blame for the stagnation squarely at Gov. J.B. Pritzker's feet.
"It's his handling of the pandemic and all the policies he's put in place that have really crippled the state," she added. "His actions have been so bad and have done so much damage, I wonder sometimes if we'll ever be able to get back to what we once were."
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