CENTRALIZED POWER VERSUS GOVERNING: WHY THE NEXT FIVE DAYS IS NOT THE TIME FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

This is directed to my friends in Western Illinois, suffering, as am I,  from the enforced lack of commerce. Most of what I say is probably applicable to about anyplace in Illinois, south of Interstate 80

You are angry. Let's be honest. You are also fearful. Many of you began with a distrust of the governor and have assigned several dozen kinds of bad faith to a shutdown order. While I feel your pain, insults, and body shaming is not made things any better for us.

Let's focus on why this is all so upsetting. Most of us recognize that the state has, within its police power, the right and obligation to take steps to ensure the general welfare. Most of us acknowledge that our state is currently a hotbed of infection and that the rate of infection is still rising. Yet my home county is just a few days from meeting the CDC requirements for initial reopening. So we are angry because we can't work or, in some cases, earn.

The previous paragraphs cover the obvious part. There is something else. Most people have not been able to articulate it. Our country, and thus our state, are founded upon opposition to centralized power. Now stay with me here: everything that has been done and ordered in Illinois has come from the executive branch, whether that is IDPH or the governor himself, it is all the executive branch. Neither the governor nor his principal lawyer is a stupid man. When he issued the order that went beyond the initial 30 days, while feeling he was keeping Illinois and safe, The Governor knew he was on thin legal ice. As soon as these little brushfire lawsuits, like Bailey's, popped up, the governor went to the third branch, the judiciary, to try and get a supervisory order. Since the legislature was unavailable to him, this was his attempt to share or, decentralize, the exercise of state power. I am sure it took the Illinois supreme court justices about 15 seconds to figure they did not want any part of that.

So the power remained in that repugnant state, centralized. Everything in our souls as Americans tells us to fight centralized power. Civil disobedience and protest are time-honored ways of fighting centralized control. But those techniques are only deployed by smart people when there is no hope in the near term that power will be decentralized.  That is not the case here.

That brings us to: "what makes sense on this Friday, May 15?" The game has changed. The legislature is coming to town next Wednesday.  What do you suppose they are hearing from their business and employee constituents? How many of them do you think actually believe they, or their predecessors, have given the governor legislative authority for a shutdown beyond 30 days?

By and large, Republican and Democrat, those lawmakers want what you want. They want commerce restored. They want the economy revived. But, being reasonable people, they would prefer to do that without running the risk of overwhelming medical facilities.

In other words, they WANT TO HELP YOU!  But you have to show them it will be OK

For just a minute, try to get entirely out of your own head and walk a mile in Those legislators' shoes. Are they more likely to "loosen things up," if they see people mingling, sharing confined space and not distancing or if the behaviors and proposals they have seen involve both commerce and safety? My take is they are far more likely to enact a plan with variances and phased return to trade if they believe the majority of citizens can interact safely and responsibly, avoiding cross-contamination.

So we make the current situation work to our advantage by, even in an act of civil disobedience, distancing and protecting against droplet projection. Even if one is a hard-core denier/hoaxer, it is easy to see that this precaution compliance for the next few days shows the legislature that loosening up is not dangerous. Remember, by the end of next week, the governor you all love to hate, is no longer going to be driving this bus.

At the risk of repeating myself, every business that can do so should create a "phase 3 safety plan", write it up, with diagrams, with photographs hack, throw in a drawn picture. Wrap that all up and send it to your county's health department as a request for a "variance." I can just about promise you that some enterprising legislator is going to show up on the general assembly floor with a handful of reasonable, responsible safety plans that can be enacted right now without harming the general welfare.

Now let's look at the other way: "How could we take this opportunity and comprehensively screw it up?" That's easy. All we have to do is demonstrate to the legislature that we do not believe there is any disease threat at all, that we can crowd into close quarters, indoors, touch each other, not cover coughs and do all that openly and notoriously. The more pictures of partiers hanging onto each other, the more counterproductive the message. The message? That our citizens do not have the discipline to reopen while observing basic safety protocols. That's the one we don't want to send.  And that is how we screw up this opportunity.

Please, understand I anticipate: "masks and distancing our bullshit," the disease is gone from here," and the ever-popular "you are just telling us to cave in to a dictator!"

I am doing none of the above. I am telling you that the lawmaking power is about to go back to where it is supposed to be – to lawmakers. Lawmakers are going to make decisions based on objective evidence. If the objective evidence is that we cannot behave in a moderately disease – defensive manner for a short while upon opening commerce, that lawmakers will be more hesitant to reopen business. I am suggesting a response to a legislative problem. While your personal feelings about masks, distancing, the governor's waist size, the governor's wife, the governor's motives are probably interesting; they are not responsive to what I am presenting here. What I have been interested in is getting my small business colleagues back up and running. The two-pronged strategy above has the best chance of doing that. Re-creating the Edmund Pettis Bridge does not.

At least think about it

LET'S TRY THIS AGAIN: LETTER TO AUTHORITIES SUPPORTING AMERICAN INGENUITY

ANTHONY B. CAMERON

ATTORNEY AT LAW

535 MAINE STREET * SUITE  12

QUINCY, ILLINOIS   62301

https://www.tonycameronlaw.com/

Telephone:  (217) 228-8669                                                                                                                                                    

Telefax:       (217) 228-2225                                                                                                                                                     IL Attorney No. 0374555

E-mail: dacamara@adams.net                                                                                                                                                  AR Attorney No.  73137

May 13, 2020

Hon. Jay Robert Pritzker, Governor

401 S. Second Street

Capitol Building, room 207

Springfield, IL  62706-1150

Hon. Kwame Raoul, Illinois Attorney General

500 S. 2^nd Street

Springfield, IL 62706 

Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Director, Illinois Department of Public Health

535 West Jefferson Street

Springfield, IL  62761

Re:     Variances as a tool in COVID 19 positioning

Dear Governor Pritzker, General Raoul and Dr. Ezike:

          First, thank you all for keeping the safety of Illinois citizens preeminent.

          As counties and regions “clear,” I am reminded of another health and safety protocol adopted by our State and how its very flexibility made it successful.

          When I was a very young lawyer,  the Illinois Environmental Protection Act was in its infancy. I had the privilege to steward it as an Assistant Attorney General and later as Division Chief.

There were, of course, resistors, naysayers and those claiming “hoax.” But those opponents were proven wrong, precisely because the Act included in its toolkit a “variance” for people who were substantially complying or for whom compliance was technologically or financially going to take longer. The existence of this tool prevented those opposed to the Act from saying it was oppressive and offered no “less burdensome alternative.”

          One might ask, “how would this apply to the current emergency measure?” Two food operators I know independently of one another recently proposed, on sunny days, placing outdoor tables at a safe social distance, allowing families to do curbside pickup, then sit, as families, in the sun, distanced from others. I’m sure, encouraged by the opportunity for a “variance,” many food operators would develop other, creative, effective, and healthy formations.

Just in terms of the mental health aspect of all this, if families could dine outdoors while maintaining social distance, it could contribute to more content, societal acceptance of the current Executive Order.   As I am confident you all know, elements of the Executive Order are becoming increasingly unpopular downstate. Speaking plainly, that makes compliance less likely.

. In each of the “family dining” cases I referenced above, the local health department correctly told these operators their plan was not permitted under the Executive Order. Under your current protocol, that is true.

But what if the local health department had the authority to perform a due process analysis and issue a variance?.  The limitations in time and configuration would be detailed on the variance document. 

The engine that drives Illinois’ economy is the creativity of its entrepreneurs. The reasonable possibility of a variance would turn many restaurant operators into creators of constructive social and commercial experiments, many of which might benefit the citizens of Illinois and also limit economic damage.

There is no time to draft detailed standards for the variance. It would have to be a simple set of principles that would allow the delivery of food and assure against cross-contamination. Such a balance is a calculus that every sanitarian in every county’s health department is trained to make. The availability of the variance remedy would cast a ray of hope to many operators who want to keep people safe but also want to feed the citizens of their region and county.

As we found so many years ago, the availability of relief in the form of a variance built support for the environmental effort in our State

Time is of the essence.   By its nature, the Executive Branch, can act quickly.  Please enable the capable people of county health departments to issue tight variances to operators with good-faith plans.  Variances would promote safety innovation.  We would also find much more enthusiastic distancing, particularly in counties where the incidence of COVID 19 is relatively slight per capita.

I do not lobby.  I represent no client with this letter.  I write as one experienced in regulatory schemes and with a simple modification that I believe would benefit all Illinoisans in promoting more enthusiastic cooperation with the balance of the Executive Order.

My contact information is on the letterhead. I would be pleased and proud to discuss this with representatives of any of your offices at your relatively early convenience. This approach can only succeed if it is adopted relatively quickly.

Thank you for your kind attention. I wish you all the best of health and every success.

Sincerely,

                                                                      /s/ Anthony B. Cameron    

ABC:lm

cc:      Hon. Kyle Moore, Mayor, City of Quincy, 730 Maine Street, Quincy, IL  62301

Hon. Gary Farha, State’s Attorney, Adams County, 521 Vermont Street,

Quincy, IL 62301

Hon. Brian Vanderhaar, Sheriff, Adams County, 521 Vermont Street,

Quincy, IL 62301

Chief Robert Copley, Quincy Police Department, 110 S. 8^th Street,

Quincy, IL 62301

Jerod Welch, Administrator, Adams County Health Department,

330 Vermont Street, Quincy, IL  62301

Hon. Jil Tracy, 3701 East Lake Centre Drive Suite 3 Quincy, IL 62305

Hon. Randy Frese, 3701 East Lake Centre Drive Suite 3 Quincy, IL 62305

Hon. Kent Snider, Chair, Adams County Board, 507 Vermont St. Quincy, IL 62301

A THOUGHT FOR OUR LEADERS

"ESSENTIAL: I AIN'T NO FORTUNATE SON.!"

On March 12, 2020, I walked out of my office to do something fun with my grandkids.

My office, a cheerful, well lighted, welcoming place, with a school house desk and coloring books for children,  has not been open to the general public since.

Attorneys have been deemed "essential" under the governor's limiting orders. And simply means it is okay for me to drive the one-mile to my office, slip in, lock the door and do a little work. It is also a gradual path to ruination, mine.

My staff has been with me a very long time. Their service is measured in decades. They each have people at home who may have comorbidities. Thus, while it is just peachy that I am "essential" I cannot have the general public in here breathing, sneezing or coughing onto my people.

So the obvious first step was to assign everybody to "work from home." That may work fine for some law offices but when the core of our mission is to sit down with people who are being troubled by government action, there is no meaningful "work from home." 

Eventually there came a time when one staffer would come in for certain number of hours every day and do document production. During these times, we could not have clients, other staff, delivery personnel or literally anyone else in the office. This virus is dangerous and I could not risk cross-contaminating my people.  Locked Doors, no more than one person with me at any time.

Inevitably, visual apps and schemes were not sufficient and I literally needed to look into someone's eyes. I devised a separation room and arranged those meetings at a time when no staff was in the office. This "separation interview" works but I can only do it two days a week, when there is no one here to cross-contaminate and I can only do two a day because it takes three hours to do a one hour interview. First, I disinfect the separation room. Then I mask up and have the meeting. Then I immediately disinfect the separation room again. The operative word here is "I." Staff doesn't do it. My wonderful cleanup crew doesn't do it. I do it because it seems wrong to ask my staff to take that risk.

Since my practice is standing up for humans against the government, my inability to meet with the usual number of humans per week reduces the possible number of humans who can hire me each week. This has financial implications for me.  Worse, right now there are more people with Government Hassles than ever, yet I can only see four a week.  It seems contradictory.

Those who know me are aware I am very private about financial matters, investments and generally what anything costs. But I now have data for two months, March 12 through May 11. For these two consecutive months I have grossed exactly one seventh of the amount it takes to keep my office operating, staff, equipment, library, specialty insurance, travel, continuing legal education, outside investigative and process services. So, for the privilege of being able to drive to my office, I get to pay out of my pocket 6/7ths of what it costs to keep my office flying each month.  

When I opened my office in 1975, I made net money my first month and never looked back.  I am unfamiliar with the concept of a law office not netting out.

Nobody has been laid off. Nobody's hours are reduced. Every paycheck has been full and timely. I have not asked my landlord for any concessions. When it comes time for him to pay his real estate tax, the county is not going to give him any concessions. I have not cut off any essential library because it is, after all, essential.

I have had a good professional life. I can do this for a while, if I must. When we come out the other side, I want to be there for the people who need drivers licenses, nursing licenses, and defense in court for DUIs, drug crimes and even sex crimes.

I discuss in other forums people whose business is not "essential" and they give me the distinct impression that they think I do not understand because I am "essential."

I am essential, all right. I am essentially taking gas just like everyone else who works for himself. If your shop or restaurant or foundry is closed please do not think that I have not walked miles in your moccasins. The only difference in your experiences and mine is that I get to travel legally back and forth to my office while I'm getting hosed.

The answer is not gathering a bunch of people together and creating disease risk. The answer is persuading the executive branch of Illinois government that we can open up safely and responsibly in a way that limits the likelihood of retransmission.

So, for those of you who think "you don't understand. You're a lawyer and your business is open as essential," I can pretty well bet you that you would not want to trade cash flow places with me. I can hate it at the same time I acknowledge the threat is not a hoax.

Be Strong.  Be independent.  Be Vocal.  But don't be dangerous.