I don't know anyone who isn't touched by the compassion and trust between human and animal that bonds us together for life, while simultaneously becoming thoroughly disgusted with government regulatory abuse that interferes with the best part of human-animal interaction, after learning the story of Peanut the squirrel.

Representative Marty Moylan (D-Des Plaines) recently told me he was “astonished” by some Chicago Transit Authority employee paychecks. Representative Moylan, the Chair of the House Transportation: Rail Systems, Roads, and Bridges Committee, is heading into the transit-funding discussions armed with an inch-and-a-half-thick binder filled with CTA salary data. The agency’s gross payroll for all employees in 2024 was close to a billion dollars.

In 2023, Dr Allen Diercks and former Scott County Supervisor Diane Holst enlisted Attorney Mike Meloy's expertise in a lawsuit to force transparency on the part of of our elected public officials with respect to the people's representation. I can't encourage and urge people enough to read the case documents for a great lesson in how government service is supposed to work according to law, but how said service often goes awry.