(The Center Square) – For a 33rd month in a row, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has reissued his COVID-19 disaster proclamation.
According to the governor’s website compiling all the proclamations and executive orders, the 37th published proclamation expired Jan. 6. A separate state website compiling such orders and proclamations also shows the most recent published order expiring Jan. 6. Pritzker’s office did not respond to multiple messages from The Center Square asking whether the governor renewed his orders.
The Illinois Municipal League, a private non-profit that advocates for local governments in Illinois, posted a memo Friday announcing the 38th order.
“With the signing of a new disaster proclamation, public meetings may continue to be held remotely … as long as certain requirements are met,” the IML said.
Pritzker has issued consecutive monthly COVID-19 disaster proclamations since March 2020. The proclamations give the governor the authority to issue a range of executive orders impacting the economy, education, health care and more.
The orders over the years included shutting down restaurants to in-person service, more than two months worth of stay-at-home orders declaring which businesses were considered essential, suspending in-person education at schools across the state, and issuing an indoor mask mandate and vaccine mandates for K-12 staff and college students and staff, among others.
Lawsuits were filed challenging several of the orders, including the ones impacting in-person dining, mask and exclusion mandates in schools, and even orders limiting jail inmates deemed unfit for trial being transferred to state facilities.
While the governor has relaxed many of the mandates over the span of nearly three years, he maintained last summer he keeps the disaster proclamations going to be in line with the federal disaster proclamation as a way to capture more federal funds. Of $4.4 trillion in total obligations from federal COVD-19 tax funds, Illinois has at least $107 billion of that in obligations, according to USASpending.gov. Of all neighboring states, Illinois has more per capita of obligation from COVID-19 federal tax funds.