SPRINGFIELD – Illinois Auditor General Frank Mautino violated campaign law as a legislator, Illinois Supreme Court Justices ruled on May 20.
They found his campaign committee improperly spent more than $200,000 at Happy’s service station in Spring Valley.
They remanded his case to state election board commissioners, who must decide whether Mautino knowingly broke the law.
If they find he did, they can fine him.
The Justices walked a line between election commissioners who cleared Mautino and Fourth District appellate judges who found he committed two violations.
Fourth District judges found fault with his practice of writing checks for cash at Spring Valley Bank before he left town.
They ruled that inappropriate use of the cash was inevitable, but the Supreme Court wouldn’t affirm that without proof.
Mautino represented a northern Illinois district on the Democratic ticket for 12 terms starting in 1992.
Legislators elevated him to auditor general in 2015, effective Jan. 1, 2016.
In accordance with election law, his committee destroyed its records.
Citizen David Cooke filed a complaint with election commissioners on Feb. 16, 2016, claiming committee expenditures didn’t comply with the law.
He also claimed the committee broke the law by filing inadequate reports.
Commissioners found the complaint justifiable and ordered the committee to amend its reports.
Mautino’s committee didn’t respond except to move for a stay, asserting his right against incriminating himself in a federal investigation.
“In written correspondence between the board’s general counsel and the U.S. attorney’s office, the latter would not confirm the existence of a parallel federal criminal investigation,” states the Supreme Court decision released May 20.
Commissioners denied a stay but issued no subpoena to Mautino.
Committee treasurer Patricia Maunu said in a deposition that she bought Happy’s gas and so did her husband and niece.
Maunu said Mautino bought it and so did his wife, son, daughter, and nephew.
She said the committee didn’t own or lease a vehicle.
Commissioners set a public hearing, and a hearing officer limited its purpose to determining whether the committee justifiably declined to amend its reports.
Cooke objected, claiming the officer should hear argument on his complaint, and the officer overruled the objection.
Commissioners found the committee violated the amendment order but not willfully, because it destroyed its records pursuant to statute.
They imposed a $5,000 civil penalty, which they haven’t collected.
Cooke appealed to Fourth District judges to require a ruling on his complaint, and they remanded it to the election board.
At a meeting in 2018, Republican commissioner Ian Linabarry quoted a provision of law permitting certain expenditures only for office holders of a committee.
Committee counsel answered that a committee could make expenditures for other persons as long as they were for campaign or governmental purposes.
Democrat commissioner William McGuffage found Mautino’s method sensible.
“If your battery dies you got to go get it replaced, and if you’re doing campaign work it’s a necessity,” he said.
The eight commissioners could take no action without five votes, and they deadlocked over Cooke’s allegations on partisan lines.
Cooke appealed, and Fourth District judges reversed the board.
They found the law effectively prohibits any expenditure to a third party for gas and repairs of vehicles neither owned nor leased by a committee.
They found any expenditure for an improper purpose would clearly exceed market value of what the committee would receive, which would be nothing.
They found it inevitable that some portion of the gas and repairs was personal use.
Likewise, they found it inevitable that the manner of payment for travel expenses over 15 years would lead to some portion being used for personal purposes.
Supreme Court Justices affirmed them on the gas and repairs but not on the cash.
Justice Rita Garman wrote that a committee may purchase a vehicle only if doing so is more cost effective than leasing.
She wrote that a committee must own or lease a vehicle to make any expenditure and the expenditure must stem from use for campaign or governmental purposes.
She wrote that a committee may reimburse persons using other vehicles for actual mileage not exceeding the standard rate.
She wrote that statute exhaustively delineates what types of expenditures might be made when a committee owns, leases, or does not own a vehicle.
“Furthermore, we note that plain language does not even mention the word, gasoline,” she wrote.
Although the Justices affirmed the Fourth District on gas at Happy’s, they rejected its finding that personal use was inevitable.
“Although it may not be an outlandish assumption because these expenditures were made for personal vehicles, it was speculation nonetheless,’ Garman wrote.
The Justices found nothing inevitable in cash at the bank either, and they affirmed the election board in dismissing that half of the complaint.
Garman wrote that Cooke couldn’t identify actual recipients or compare amounts Mautino withdrew with the cost of his travel.
“Instead, Cooke could only demonstrate the peculiarity of the committee and Mautino’s method of reporting expenditures for certain travel expenses,” she wrote.
Chief Justice Anne Burke and colleagues Mary Jane Theis, Michael Burke, and David Overstreet concurred.
Justices Scott Neville and Robert Carter took no part.