McHenry Times

Illinois state Rep. Dan Ugaste (R-Geneva) is eagerly awaiting data from a survey of residents in his 65th District that seeks to determine whether they believe the time has come for Gov. J.B. Pritzker to restart the state's economy.

“I’m hoping to be able to have put everything together in the coming days,” Ugaste told the Kane County Reporter. “All the early feedback from small business owners seems to be that they’re looking for grants and not loans to help them through this and while they’re trying to pay everyone with any Paycheck Protection Program funding they’ve been able to get they all say it’s not enough to cover everything.”

Ugaste said it all seems to add up to a bunch of anxious business owners and employees made even more frustrated by their inability to return to work or run their businesses.

“We’re getting new data all the time and my hope is that, if it continues to show all our safety measures and precautions are working, we can do something soon or at least start to move in that direction,” Ugaste said. “You don’t want to jump too soon and make things worse over the long haul, but at the same time you have to know there’s another side to the equation.”

Since the governor enacted his stay-at-home order at the end of March, countless businesses across the state deemed nonessential by the government have been forced to close their doors. While Pritzker has not indicated if he plans to extend the order when it expires on April 30, the state’s unemployment rate has jumped by 1.2 percent to 4.6 percent overall.