Lucky state auditor avoided audit of his (destroyed) records
Apr. 22—Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan is scheduled to be sentenced June 13 for his conviction on public corruption charges.
The bribery trial of current Chicago state Sen. Emil Jones III continued Monday, with final arguments to the jury to be followed by deliberations and a verdict.
The ComEd Four — three Commonwealth Edison lobbyists and a former CEO — will be sentenced someday soon, maybe, following their convictions for conspiring to bribe Madigan.
So many corruption cases. It's hard to keep them all straight, especially with the passage of time.
The calendar moves like lightning. Memories fade. Now who was that guy who was indicted or should have been way back when?
The subject came up the other day when Patrick Pfingsten of The Illinoize reported that Frank Mautino, the state's auditor general, plans to retire within a year.
An Illinois House member from Spring Valley, Mautino was appointed in 2016 by his fellow legislators to a 10-year term. That came after Mautino won former House Speaker Michael Madigan's support for the important, well-paying job.
What does this have to do with Illinois' history of shady or questionable conduct by public officials?
After Mautino became auditor general, the Edgar County Watchdogs flashed their sharp teeth and took a look at Mautino's campaign spending.
When finished, they raised a question that was never definitively answered: What happened to nearly $500,000 in Mautino campaign funds?
The watchdogs found roughly $250,000 in payments to Mautino's hometown Spring Valley bank. They found another $213,000 in expenditures between March 2005 and December 2015 that reportedly went for fuel and repairs at a service station owned by one of Mautino's friends and supporters.
The Illinois State Board of Elections asked where the bank money went, because the expenditures were not payments to the bank. As for the vehicle expenses, the Illinois Supreme Court found they were made for vehicles "neither owned nor leased" by the Mautino campaign.
Eyebrows were raised. One former legislator insisted Mautino explain himself because "the office of auditor general requires the highest ethical standards."
The late Adam Andrzejewski, chairman of spending watchdog Open the Books, insisted Mautino must demonstrate his integrity or resign.
Mautino did neither. He hired a lawyer, kept his mouth shut and waited for things to blow over.
One reason why there were never any explanations is that Mautino's spending records had been destroyed.
One of Mautino's constituents, David Cooke, a retired teacher from Streator, filed a formal complaint with the elections board that urged an in-depth investigation. Board members told Cooke he'd have to do the investigation himself.
A volunteer lawyer from the Liberty Justice Center eventually took up Cooke's cause. The elections board — an eight-member panel divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans — dismissed the case. Then the appellate court reinstated it.
Eventually, the board fined Mautino's campaign committee $5,000. Since the committee had been dissolved, there was no entity to pay the fine.
It was, in the finest fashion of Illinois, a non-scandal scandal — lots of smoke, too little verifiable information.
Where did the money go? Those who know never said. Those who didn't know had dark suspicions.
The irony, of course, is that the auditor general's job that Mautino filled involved conducting oversight into how state government spends taxpayer dollars.
The general's auditors track down illegal spending, unwise spending, inefficient spending. They identify wrongdoers and write reports intended for public consumption.
Mautino proved to be the watchdog who was watched and found wanting. Now, as he plans his retirement, he's just another public official whose questionable escapades have faded away.
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