Quincy Reporter

Mecki Kosin knows the pain of the crippling impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on Illinois small businesses all too well.

“I’ve made $125 in income over the last several weeks and have had to furlough all my workers,” Kosin, a conservative Quincy activist, told the Quincy Reporter of her travel agency business. “It’s just killing everyone and the way Gov. Pritzker is handling the situation isn’t helping anyone.”

Despite all the growing criticism to his five-phase Restore Illinois plan, the governor is staunchly standing behind it, recently vowing to have local law enforcement and the Illinois State Police take action against businesses that defy the stay-at-home order he enacted.

Kosin said she can’t understand why the governor continues to treat the whole state based on the way things appear to be going in Chicago and perhaps a few other collar counties.

As of June 26, Illinois reported 140,291 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, including 6,847 deaths. Adams County, however, has had just 76 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

“Parts of the state are ready to go and get back to doing business,” she said. “What he’s doing just isn’t going to work and by the time he gets around to opening things all the way back up we won’t have a state left.”

Kosin and several other groups in Adams County recently took the liberty of sending the governor a plan they outlined for allowing the region to open back up, but never even received a response back from his office.

“We’re planning a disobedience rally now in support of small businesses and talking about filing a lawsuit,” she said. “We’re all coming together now because everybody thinks what the governor is doing is flat out wrong.”

Kosin said Pritzker’s threats about getting law enforcement involved won’t do much to detour their movement.

“We have a good relationship with local police and we’re not afraid of the state police,” she said. “We’re not doing anything to hurt anyone and right now we’re the ones doing all the hurting.”