Agency's request to Pritzker on Restore Illinois plan 'softened'
A potential request to reduce a standard for moving from one phase to the next of Gov. J.B. Pritzker's Restore Illinois plan was not included in a letter to him from an agency representing 42 suburbs in the region Friday.
Schaumburg Mayor Tom Dailly said members of the Northwest Municipal Conference on Wednesday had discussed asking that the standard requiring hospital admissions for COVID-19 remain level or decrease be reduced to 14 days from 28 days and he had not realized it was not included in a letter sent to the governor on Friday. A story in Saturday's Daily Herald based on his and others comments favoring a 14-day standard incorrectly said that it had been included.
Dailly said he expects the 14-day request to be part of a draft resolution that will be discussed by Schaumburg trustees on Tuesday and Palatine's village manager has indicated it would be part of a discussion there on Monday.
"Well, it was part of the conversation," Dailly said Saturday. "Keep in mind, we were in a two-hour conversation."
Dailly said there had been concerns about coming across as too confrontational, which led the group to make another adjustment to its position.
"To soften that, to not make it appear to the governor that we were opposing him, we changed from a resolution to a letter," he said.
The letter ultimately contained two specific requests - to divide the larger region of the greater Chicago area into smaller subregions following the boundaries of the state's 11 emergency medical services regions, and to work to safely phase in the opening of restaurants and bars in Phase 3 rather than Phase 4 of the plan.
Hoffman Estates Mayor Bill McLeod said he had been aware that the request for a reduction to 14 days had been left out, but that it could possibly be part of his village's own position, which will be discussed Monday.
"Nobody is defying the governor's ordinance," McLeod said. "We just want him to consider going back and not lumping us in with Chicago. We're just respectfully asking that he think about it."