Editorial Roundup: Illinois

Chicago Sun-Times. March 12, 2021.

Editorial: Stop hunting bobcats in Illinois

Apex predator species of all types are a key to a balanced environment. They keep prey species from outgrowing their food supply and keep pests from proliferating.

Five years ago, Illinois lawmakers trotted out a lot of ridiculous arguments to justify ending protections for bobcats that had been in place for 44 years.

They called the elusive animals, which have never been known to kill a single person, ferocious. They compared them to saber-toothed tigers. They conjured up unsubstantiated stories of bobcats raiding chickens and killing pet cats on farms.

The Legislature voted, by a razor-thin margin, to create an Illinois bobcat hunting season. This year’s season ended on Feb. 15.

Since bobcat hunting has resumed, more than 1,500 bobcats have been killed in Illinois, the Humane Society of the United States says. Before that, bobcats, which had been on the state’s threatened species list, had barely managed to recover from being overhunted in the past. Bobcat hunting remains illegal in Chicago and the northeast portion of the state.

The rush to end four decades of bobcat protections in Illinois was part of an ongoing and unwise assault on predator species in general in the United States. It threatens to upend decades of scientific efforts to return predator species to the land by balancing their needs with those of humans.

On March 10, Michigan’s state Senate approved a resolution urging state wildlife officials there to allow wolf hunting and trapping this year. Wisconsin recently held its first wolf hunt in several years, and some Montana lawmakers are trying to allow leg-hold traps, neck snares, extended seasons and the use of spotlights to shoot wolves at night.

Right before November’s presidential election, the Trump administration lifted Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in the lower 48 states, except for Arizona and New Mexico, though wolves are basically extinct in most of their former range. President Joe Biden’s administration, on the new president’s first day in office, said it would review that decision.

Apex predator species of all types are a key to a balanced environment. They keep prey species from outgrowing their food supply and keep pests from proliferating. Wolf packs weakened by hunting are more likely to attack livestock.

Illinois’ shy and nocturnal bobcats eat rabbits, hares and rats, which farmers consider pests. They go out of their way to avoid people.

Bobcats are not hunted for their meat. Instead, hunters kill them to collect a trophy or for the animals’ reddish-brown, spotted coats, which can be sold on an international market. But that means using inhumane steel-jawed traps that can keep them languishing in pain for up to 24 hours or chasing them with dogs that might rip the terrified bobcats apart or tree them until a hunter arrives to shoot them.

Moreover, wildlife enthusiasts - the ones opposed to the hunt - say that their own views didn’t get a fair hearing when the Legislature voted to allow the resumption of bobcat hunting. Nature belongs to all of us, not just hunters, and the fewer bobcats roaming the state, the less chance anyone will have to see one. The thrill of seeing a bobcat in its habitat ought to outweigh someone having a chance to wear slippers made of bobcat fur.

On Monday, the Illinois House Agriculture & Conservation Committee will hold a hearing on a bill to ban bobcat hunting in the state. The bill has been in the works ever since bobcat hunting resumed, says state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, a co-sponsor.

This time around, we hope the Legislature will base its decisions on the best science. If the Legislature simply does that, conservationists say, it will reinstate the ban on bobcat hunting.

“We don’t believe the science supports a hunting season for bobcats,” said Jennifer Walling, executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council. “It has had a detrimental effect on their population, particularly in areas of the states where their population hasn’t recovered.”

We share the planet with predators such as bobcats. We need enlightened, science-based policies and laws that guide us in doing this as best we can.

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Champaign News-Gazette. March 12, 2021.

Editorial: Hot topics that are too hot to handle?

New legislators like to make a big splash when they first get to Springfield, not necessarily with their colleagues but with the folks back home.

State Rep. Dave Vella certainly isn’t the first politician to try to burnish his reputation back home by introducing legislative proposals that sound good but probably won’t go far.

But give him credit anyway.

A Rockford Democrat who narrowly defeated a Republican incumbent in November, Vella has taken up two hot-button issues - legislative pensions and legislative lobbying.

Vella has proposed barring retired legislators from immediately turning to lobbying their former colleagues after they leave the House or Senate. Instead, he wants to require them to wait five years before they can cash in on this lucrative endeavor.

Vella’s other proposal will go over even bigger with constituents who have over the years become increasingly resentful of state government and anyone associated with it.

He proposes to end the legislative retirement system, which pays incredibly generous benefits to retirees but is in dire financial shape. That pension fund has only 17 percent of the assets it needs to meet current obligations.

Vella is on the right track with his assertions that the lobbying and pension rules were formed to meet legislators’ financial desires, not the public’s needs.

The notion that legislators can leave office and immediately start lobbying their former colleagues is ridiculous. While Vella is pushing this bill, he ought to amend it to bar legislators from lobbying at other levels of government in Illinois.

The whole arrangement is unsavory, and it’s one of the reasons that government in Illinois is often unsavory. Then again, it’s also profitable.

That’s the problem. Are legislators going to revise weak lobbying rules that many intend to exploit when they leave? Would they really slap a five-year ban on the practice, a time period in which their influence with former colleagues will only decline?

Despite all the talk of ethics reform, it’s hard to imagine they will embrace substantive reform.

As for the legislative pension system, current legislators might cut off access to the honey pot for future legislators.

A large number of House and Senate members, including Vella, already have declined to sign up for it because people back home resent the absurdly generous benefits.

Here’s just one example: Former House Speaker Michael Madigan is eligible to collect a $7,100-a-month pension, a sum that will jump to $12,600 per month in a year. Does a pension of $150,000 a year for a multimillionaire lawyer make sense in a nearly bankrupt state?

Change comes hard in Springfield, and it’s especially hard when proposed changes affect legislators’ principal concern - their finances. Vella chose two winning ideas, but it would be no surprise if his colleagues regard them as sure losers.

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The Kankakee Daily Journal. March 13, 2021.

Editorial: Claim ownership of your government

Despite what you may have heard - repeatedly - journalists are most definitely not your enemy. We believe that holds especially true when it comes to local journalists. The ones who live in your community and have made it their life’s work to inform.

In our daily newsroom meetings here, at the Daily Journal, we discuss the going-ons in the community to determine where we should put our available resources for that day or even that week. Oftentimes, those precious resources are spent sitting in public meetings of little to no interest to most of our readers. So if a meeting will net a story that most won’t read, maybe we’re spending our time where we shouldn’t? No. We are exactly where we need to be. As the paper of record for this community, we take our role as the Fourth Estate seriously.

We sit through that long, boring meeting on your, the taxpayer’s, behalf. That’s because we believe all business the government does, whether in open public meetings or behind closed doors, is your business.

And when that business is being done - because it is paid for by taxpayer money - we believe there should be someone watching, keeping track. That’s what we do day in and day out.

We believe every last penny your government spends is your money. And as such, it is your right to know every transaction, every decision, every expenditure and every deliberation of your government. Whether those decisions and transactions are conducted at a local, regional, state or national level, it’s the public’s business.

And if a government is truly to be by the people for the people, then it must be done in front of the people. The government is not some far-off land from which you are prohibited. You are the government and the government is you.

So, why are we talking about all this? Because another Sunshine Week is upon us. It’s a national initiative spearheaded by the News Leaders Association to educate the public about the importance of open government and the dangers of excessive and unnecessary secrecy.

It’s a week for Americans to stop and remember their government should be working for them and in their best interest. It’s a week we hold dear as journalists because it aims to protect that which is at the heart of our mission - you.

So, this week, we encourage you to take part in your government in some fashion. That can be as easy as joining us at one of those public meetings. We’ll save you a seat.

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