Kendall County Times

House Republican Floor Leader Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield) is joining his Republican colleagues in pushing for legislation that would limit a governor's ability to extend executive orders.

"We can't accept a process simply because we like an outcome. You know that outcome might change," Batinick said at an Oct. 20 news conference regarding House Bill 843 filed by Rep. Dan Ugaste (R-Geneva). "You look at other states, I don't think the governor should have the authority to do nearly two years of 38 emergency orders and do all these rules and mandates any more than I think Gov. DeSantis in Florida should be doing mandates saying that you can't add a layer of protection of masks at the local level. That's not the way it's meant to be done.”

HB 843 would let a governor's executive order stand for 30 days. Any extension to the order would require that "he or she receives written approval to extend the proclamation or make an additional proclamation from 3 legislative leaders or the General Assembly adopts a joint resolution approving the extension or additional proclamation.”

In addition, the measure outlines that a disaster proclamation issued, or a disaster proclamation regarding the same disaster, shall be void and have no legal effect if at any time the General Assembly adopts a joint resolution declaring the proclamation to be void.

“We’re meant to have legislative input for a reason,” Batinick said. “And it's also a matter of trust a little bit. I think you're seeing a lack of trust in government. I think it's pretty fair to say there's a big lack of trust for many of our citizens because of the lack of transparency. You know you have elected officials that maybe take statistics and data out of context pretty significantly. And if we were to have a more open and transparent process, I think you’d probably have more compliance with what we're doing and more trust.”

Batinick said he’s long stressed to the governor that there needs to be public buy-in for the actions that he takes on the pandemic.

“Things needed to make sense to people,” he said. “And right now, I feel like we're losing the public buy-in on the pandemic and how to move forward.”