By MARK MEDLYN, guest columnist
The pandemic. The China Flu. The Covid. Depending on what your political persuasion is, there is a different name for the disease which has taken over the world in 2020. Ironically, a year ago, these names would have been foreign to us, but will now be in our lexicon for the remainder of this century, or at least until the next medical crisis hits.
As a bistate resident, I have had a unique opportunity to see how each state, Illinois and Indiana, has handled this crisis.
Indiana went into the new year with billions in the bank. Illinois went into the new year billions in debt. Both states were looking for very strong economies to continue to grow their state finances further into the black, or not as bleak as it had been.
The Illinois governor, like the Indiana governor, was new to the job. The Illinois governor was born into billions with his family owning the Hyatt Corporation. Indiana’s governor had come from more modest means. Their views on the role of government could not be more different. One believes in personal responsibility, while one views the role of government to rule everything in one’s life.
The Illinois governor seemingly views his job as a hobby, while Indiana’s governor views it as a sworn duty, as he was pressed into service at the last moment in 2016.
Both have approached their response in two different manners. While the Illinois governor, from the very beginning, has made it clear that all the deaths in Illinois were due to malfeasance in Washington, Indiana’s governor has been less willing to blame one person for the pandemic.
The Illinois governor has refused to take responsibility for any of the inaction of the state, including the deaths of dozens of its veterans at the veteran home in Quincy in the past three weeks. The Illinois governor demanded that we all shelter in place and not travel out of state, while at the same time, his wife and children moved to their mansion in Florida. The Illinois governor spent the summer at his home in Wisconsin, while at the same time telling us not to travel to Wisconsin. This irony was not lost on the citizens of Illinois, as Florida and Wisconsin, unlike Illinois, did not impose such measures.
Compare that to how the Indiana governor came across: telling people across the state that the situation is dire, but that together, we can get through this. Did schools close? Yes. But this fall, when Indiana celebrated state champions in fall sports, Illinois has banned all contact sports until sometime this spring. It will be not until the winter of 2021 that basketball is allowed to be played again in the state of Illinois. Could you imagine the uproar if Indiana followed suit?
The state of Illinois is not all on the same page. While the mayor of Chicago cites people for excess gatherings, and she holds large Halloween parties, the three primary law enforcement agencies in Champaign County have made it abundantly clear that they will not be responding to large mass gatherings, leaving the governor to issue warnings that he has no way of enforcing. Even restaurants locally in Champaign-Urbana and south of Chicago have responded by not closing, in defiance of the governor and the public health department. Individual counties in Illinois have announced that they are not going to enforce the rules established by the governor. In short, there are 102 counties each doing their own thing.
A state is a union, not individual fiefdoms. To say that this is confusing is a misnomer, since the actions in one county will get you cited, while in another, no one will come to cite you.
In Indiana, restaurants are open albeit with limitations of occupancy, sporting events can have fans, and people can have somewhat a normal existence.
As we come out of the pandemic, only Illinois has chosen to get a government loan. Indiana will weather the storm with slightly less money in the bank, while Illinois is looking at junk bond status.
The irony, for me, is how the citizens from Illinois view Hoosiers. It is not in the best light, as I have been hearing about it for the past 42 years. But isn’t it funny that the state whose politicians denigrate Hoosiers on a weekly basis is the one that is in the most dire financial predicament of any state in the union?
Yes, the pandemic has been hard on everyone. But Hoosiers have that “can-do” attitude that will get us through this, while Illinois looks to Washington to get them out of the financial mess that they have sown over the past 20 years. The contrasts between the two states cannot be more stark and frightening.
Mark C. Medlyn of Brown County is a new, occasional community columnist. A graduate of Bloomington High School South and Indiana University, he has worked as a police officer and an adjunct college instructor, authored a textbook on the Illinois vehicle code, and became a substitute teacher in Illinois upon his retirement from full-time law enforcement in 2007. He and his wife, a retired university instructor, have been Brown County property owners since 2015.
