Guess who was in Peoria this week? Dick Durbin and Aaron Schock. You may recall that Scott Sorrel, Tom O’Neill, Jimmy Dillon, and Tim Riggenbach just last week traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with these same two people, at a cost to taxpayers of $3,000. They didn’t actually meet with them, though. They met with Schock’s and Durbin’s staffs.

The justification for this trip was that the city council and county board reps could meet with “key projects directors for the legislators, who are the one’s who really make things happen,” and who “typically don’t make it to Illinois.” Of course, those staffs work for the Senator and Congressman, not the other way around. So they only “make things happen” with the support of Durbin and Schock.

The bottom line is, they could have met face to face here, and Schock and Durbin could have directed their staffs to “make things happen” when they got back to D.C., and the taxpayers could have saved $3,000. Better yet, the City and County could simply stop squandering our money on bread and circuses so we wouldn’t have to lobby Congress for money to take care of basic services like municipal road repair.

Hope our local officials enjoyed their taxpayer-funded vacation to D.C.