The Winnebago County health department has pending cases against 26 businesses for failure to comply with state rules. “We have employees to feed. We have bills to pay. We need to stay open for our community,” said one business’s spokesman. “There is no explanation for why bars and restaurants should close. For them to come and try to close us down is wrong.”

Sangamon County Department of Public Health director Gail O’Neill said, “We need to kind of work to flatten the curve again. From talking to the doctors on our morning calls, they’re starting to seriously feel the stretch and the stress of their medical systems with having very full ICUs, a lot of people very, very sick.”

In Champaign County, where the University of Illinois is located, each home football game brings in about $3 million to the local economy, according to a Visit Champaign County study. The Fighting Illini will play four home games compared with the usual seven or eight, in a mostly empty Memorial Stadium.

In addition to extending the eviction moratorium, Pritzker also reissued numerous other executive orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including a moratorium on garnishments and wage deductions.

Intensive care bed usage is up as well, with 410 COVID-19 patients occupying ICU beds and 151 on ventilators as of Thursday night.

Illinois State Senator Mattie Hunter had strong words for the bankers who denied credit to Black borrowers and the banking industry in general: “This is a criminal situation here as far as I am concerned, because you all have withheld billions and billions and billions of dollars from my community, from our community, and many of you all need to lose your license.”

Jim Dey: “Given the energy spent by Gov. J.B. Pritzker targeting “millionaires and billionaires” in his campaign for a progressive income-tax amendment to the Illinois Constitution, one might think the super-wealthy are as common as rabbits and squirrels. In fact, they are almost as rare as hen’s teeth…Of the 18 (billionaires in Illinois), six are Pritzkers.”

“They have implemented every single one of the mitigation factors that we have asked them to do,” Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara said. “They take reservations. They’ll check temperatures. They’ll use hand sanitizer. They’ll not place utensils at the table. But to be closed down for indoor dining, as we are going into the colder weeks and months, we’re really just saying close your doors, you’re not going to make it through the holiday season.”

The 5.69 million blue pamphlets sent to Illinois voters were mandated by law, but the constitutional amendment explanation inside included misleading language in its favor. The blue pamphlets and the ballot question itself, by state law, are to contain a neutral description of the ballot question.

Meanwhile, the state’s unemployment rate of 10.2% remains nearly 30% higher than the national average of 7.9%.

“Absent more federal aid, Governor JB Pritzker’s threat of 5% to 10% across-the-board budget cuts could be disastrous for some public universities…Reduced funding is especially concerning for the public universities that have fewer revenue streams and depend more on state funding. Those are often the schools that educate more low-income and first-generation students.”

“Were the proposed graduated-rate income tax adopted, Illinois would trail its peers in just about every aspect of its tax code,” according to the report from the Tax Foundation. “If businesses and individuals are leaving the state now, these policies can only make the problem worse.”

“Now it’s time for me to get some of those benefits that I paid into for years and years. And now that it’s time to do that its disappointing that I now have to go through these hoops and hurdles to do so,” said Jonathan Robinson, who left his job in April to care for his two children after the schools shut down. “And I’m still waiting. Still waiting.”

The 2021 tentative budget is balanced and calls for nearly $1.42 billion in spending, with $380 million going to operations and maintenance, $468 million for debt payments, and $567 million for road building and improvements.