State officials want insurance companies to expedite claims for businesses hit by looters

Posted on June 8, 2020
Jonathan Swain owns a liquor store in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. (Dave Dahl/WJBC)

 

By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – Looters did not discriminate between white-and black-owned businesses.

Jonathan Swain, who is black, owns a liquor store in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood and says there is an immediacy that insurance does not necessarily cover.

“Small business owners, in particular black business owners, do not have strong balance sheets that are full of cash to pay some of these upfront costs,” he told a Chicago news conference Monday. “We have to pay staff to come in and get the business ready we have to replce fixtures and damage, we have to replace computers – which are our registers, which we can’t operate without – and we have to purchase inventory.”

The news conference was for Gov. JB Pritzker to urge insurers to work with their customers and give them a break on discontinuing their insurance.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected]

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