Hello, Bay City: Phil Ellison has made a career fighting for the underdog. Here’s how he’s fighting for Bay City residents.

On a summer afternoon two decades ago, Phil Ellison was driving through his hometown of Hemlock when he was pulled over, clocked at 18 mph over the limit.

Ellison swears there was no posted limit to begin with. The road was under construction, and crews had taken down the signs. In his mind, he was already out of town, where the speed picked up.

The police officer didn’t see it that way. Ellison got a ticket. He doesn’t remember the exact fine anymore — it was a couple hundred dollars — but he remembers the feeling. He was making $5.15 an hour bagging groceries at the time and soon learned that even a minor run-in with the law could spiral into higher insurance premiums and bureaucratic headaches.

“It was just unfair,” Ellison says now. “And I had no mechanism by which to fight that.”