(dramatic orchestral music) - Welcome to "Capitol View," the weekly program on state politics and government, and how it might just affect you.

Joining me this week on "Capitol View" is Dave McKinney, politics and government reporter for WBEZ radio in Chicago.

Welcome, Dave.

- Bruce, good to see you.

- It's good to see you.

Also, Kent Redfield, professor emeritus of political science at University of Illinois, Springfield.

Welcome, Professor Redfield.

- Good to be here.

- Good, well, there was some news that hit just yesterday.

We are taping a couple days before this will air, but the news this week has been Sam McCann, former senator, state senator, Sam McCann.

The federal prosecutors yesterday announced that he's been indicted, and boy, what a boatload of trouble he appears to be in.

Seven counts, I believe, of a wire fraud.

There's also money laundering, tax evasion.

If they throw the book at him, and things go unluckily for him, he could be facing 20 years in the hoo-ha.

And this is not something that is perhaps a surprise to folks who will followed the saga of former State Senator Sam McCann over the years.

He was a state senator from 2011 to, I believe, 2019.

He made an unsuccessful run for governor in 2018, and got, I believe, four percent of the vote.

There have been allegations going back years, at least to 2014, that he had been dipping into campaign funds for such things as a mileage, I think, I believe he claimed something like $38,000 in mileage in the course of one year.

He also had large expenditures that weren't itemized, checks that were written from his campaign account, for quote unquote, "grouped expenditures."

The Illinois State Board of Elections had taken a complaint on this years ago in 2016, as he was preparing to face, make sure I get this right, Bryce Benton, I think, was the name of his opponent in the GOP primary.

And the charges did not, or the accusations back then did not affect his political future.

He was reelected as a state senator.

Now, he's been alleged to have bought two vehicles, well, no, four vehicles.

Lemme get this straight, a $61,000 SUV, a 2018 Ford 250 pickup truck, a used motor home for $25,000, and a brand new travel trailer for like 18 grand or something like that.

The one that I guess, to me at least, made me go, geez, this is interesting, was he's, he is alleged by prosecutors who have bought the RV and the travel trailer, and then established accounts at an Ohio RV brokerage business, and rented the RVs he owned to himself, and ended up pocketing, according to prosecutors, more than $50,000.

And the RV broker, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, got something like nine grand in the deal.

Kent, are you surprised that something like this might happen in the state of Illinois?

- Well, I'm surprised at the magnitude of what's alleged, and I mean, historically, you could spend your campaign fund.

This is the money that people give you to run for office.

So, an official committee formed under the law would, and those reports to the state Board of Elections.

So prior to the late '90s, you could pretty much do a lot of what is alleged in terms of McCann's actions.

Now, committing financial fraud, essentially, you know, renting something to yourself, and pocketing the money obviously is way beyond the Illinois campaign finance law.

I mean, bribery, extortion, you know- - Is that okay?

I can't remember, go ahead.

(laughs) - But so, he's alleged to have taken money essentially from his account into his personal account, and then paid his mortgage.

Prior to 1999, that would not have been illegal.

Now, it certainly is illegal.

The problem with these things getting looked at in Illinois is that you file reports with the state Board of Elections.

They have in their financial disclosure office staff that goes through, and makes sure the proper papers are filed, makes sure the numbers add up.

They are, you know, they do not have the power to initiate audits, except in extreme cases, they are, they don't bring actions on themselves, they react, things get initiated by someone filing a complaint.

And so, if you keep a low profile, once you leave office, if you've got money in your fund, or even while you're in office, you can abuse it, you know, I mean, the general rule is no personal use.

If you create an income tax liability, then you violated Illinois's laws, well as you're in trouble with the IRS if you don't report it.

But what you've got here is someone who is, you know, really pushed the limits of the ambiguous parts.

And in a number of cases clearly, stepped across the line.

I mean, if you go out to lunch, and take a constituent to lunch, and you talk politics, and you charge it to your campaign fund, is that personal use or is that a political purpose?

You know, if you do it every day, a year in and year out, it's probably an abuse, but it's ambiguous.

So, this is clearly a case where, you know, the law is not drawn narrowly enough, and the state Board of Elections doesn't have the resources, and frankly, they don't have the authority to could be proactive in terms of these cases.

But you know, this looks like if what's alleged is true, he is in really serious trouble.

- Yeah, I'm wondering, I mean, I'm not particularly shocked, frankly, and nobody should be, I think, that an elected official, or former elected official in Illinois has been accused of breaking the law.

What I'm kind of more interested in is what does this teach us?

What should we draw from this in terms of the structure of how we keep folks honest?

And I guess I'm maybe referring here to the Illinois State Board of Elections.

As you mentioned, professor, audits are rare, and only in extreme circumstances.

Wasn't this kind of an extreme circumstance going back a long time?

If they're not gonna audit Sam McCann, who are they gonna audit?

- Well, you know, it has to be audit for cause, or they do some random audits, but all they- - [Bruce] I do think they do that, but go ahead, yeah, go ahead.

- Yeah, you have to get a majority of the board that is four Democrats and four Republicans.

And they generally are aggressive in going after independent candidates and third parties, they tend not to be aggressive in terms of going after, you know, the Democrats don't wanna gang up on, you know, don't want the Republicans to gang up on them, and vice versa.

So it's very difficult to get assertive action out of the state board.

It's a structural problem.

It also is about, you know, we could have, we could require every candidate who holds public office to file a yearly audit of their campaign fund, you know, certified by an accountant.

But we don't do that.

- What about going forward here after you left office?

Because in McCann's case, the feds have alleged that he was stealing money up until last June.

And he hasn't held office in Illinois for a number of years, and this was the guise of his Conservative Party of Illinois never really went very far other than, you know, to promote his own candidacy for governor.

And yet, state law allows these campaign funds to exist in perpetuity.

- Yeah.

- So, what and- - Yeah, unlike other states, we don't require to people to close out their funds, and how they spend that money.

We have had former public officials hire themselves as consultants to their fund, which doesn't seem to be doing anything at all.

The money sits there forever.

It's also a question of who owns the money.

It's a separate entity.

We indicted Citizens for Ryan, and the feds did, and put it out of business, before they ever went after George Ryan.

We had a fight between Judy Baar Topinka's son and her longtime aide, about who owned and controlled Topinka's campaign fund after she died.

You know, it's an area that, you know, frankly needs attention, and this just illustrates the problem.

- Yeah, and I think at least locally here in Springfield, you just reminded me of something.

When former Mayor Davlin met an untimely end, I believe in 2007-ish, his campaign fund was transferred to the Catholic church, and there amid allegations that he had stolen from the church.

And so, you know, I guess you, and we do have politicians, Jim Edgar, for example, hasn't been an elected official since 1999.

He stole about a quarter million dollars in his campaign fund.

And I'm not accusing of any wrongdoing, I mean, I took a quick look.

He gives to good causes, you know, performing arts centers, various charities, that sort of thing.

But is it okay once you're elected, that if you're a good fundraiser, and Senator Larry Bomke locally, he's another example, he has in excess of $300,000.

And he's used that at times to promote certain political candidates.

But is it okay for someone to build this kind of a treasure chest, and then be able to, I think Jim Ryan may have had some money still when he died.

Is that, that to me is a big question mark, and doesn't it kind of, on some level, create temptation that doesn't need to be there, or create an expectation of, I am a big important elected politician in Illinois, and for the rest of my life, I will be able to throw money around.

- Yeah, if, you know opportunity for corruption, appearance of corruption, you know, those two things are corrosive to the public support of the process and politics.

I don't think anybody listening to our discussion this morning is reassured about the integrity of Illinois politics.

And so, it's something certainly needs to be addressed.

- Hey, I wanna correct one thing I said just a few minutes ago with regard to Jim Ryan.

I meant Jim Thompson, the former governor.

Jim Ryan is not dead, he's alive and well, and good health to him.

I meant, my own brain screwing up once again, but it was Jim Thompson, the former governor, who I meant to say.

And he's, I believe, had his campaign fund was alive and well long after he became governor.

Dave, I mean, what do you think about, you know, the use of some of these campaign funds?

For one thing, they're being used for legal expenses, for politicians sometimes who are caught in legal binds.

Is that legal?

And is that, on one level, and is it okay on the other level?

- Well, I mean, it's legal on the basis that they argue that these fees arise from, you know, the official duties that these politicians perform.

And you know, you could understand if there was a ballot challenge for example, or if there was, you know, anything associated with getting elected, certainly.

And remaining in office, certainly.

That's what they're there for.

But the idea that they can be used for legal fees in cases like this, we don't know, of course, if McCann will do that.

I mean, his balance, I- - $35,565, when I checked last night, go ahead.

- All right, $35,000, lemme see, that will pay for probably, I don't know, a few hundred hours, if that, of a quality lawyer.

- [Bruce] That'll pay for some Cheetos in the hoosegow, but go ahead.

- Yeah, exactly.

So, in his case, it might not apply, but in other cases, the, you know, one example that comes to mind is former house speaker, Michael Madigan.

We know that, you know, the federal prosecutors in Chicago have had him in their crosshairs, because of the Commonwealth Edison bribery case.

And there had been, there's been at least one lawsuit in federal court that has arose, in which he is a named defendant, arising from the Comm-Ed scandal.

And he's been using his campaign fund, the Friends of Michael J Madigan Fund, to pay some of these fees.

And, you know, the most recent filing, from October to December of last year, he had spent about a million dollars out of that fund on legal fees to the lawyer that's handling, you know, the civil lawsuit, and helping in the criminal case.

I mean, Madigan has not been charged of course, but you know, he's still in the crosshairs.

Since the start of 2000, I think, the same law firm has gotten about a million, seven from him.

So you can see that that's an example of how these these funds get used for that purpose.

You go back to Rod Blagojevich.

He, I think he wound up using about two and a half million, or a little more than that out of his campaign fund to pay for for the legal defense in a couple of his trials.

So, that's an area where you just, it's hard to envision any kind of serious reform, as is the case with anything related to these campaign funds, because politicians want as much flexibility, and leeway as they can in how this money gets spent.

And I agree with what Kent said, that, you know, because there is no serious audit function anywhere, the only way in which any of this stuff gets exposed is through reporting, or through, you know, a criminal investigation that might arise.

But I don't know, I think with McCann, you know, McCann is, what's particularly audacious about the McCann allegations is that, that at least a chunk of this activity was occurring during his run for governor.

And it really kind of raises questions like, you know, not only about the behavior and the judgment, but it's like, what was the real purpose behind the run for governor?

Was, you know, knowing that there were financial problems apparently here, was that sort of a side focus, that somebody says, well, I could run for governor, and raise a little bit of money, and maybe help out with personal expenditures.

It's not clear if that's, you know, at all in play here, but it begs the question.

- Yeah, no, absolutely.

It does, and let's hope that Mr. McCann is somewhat of an outlier here.

I mean, you've read the, I presume we've all read the indictment, and you're just looking at it, saying, was he in politics to achieve public good, or to frankly, line his pocket?

And you read the amounts of money involved, and the things that he was alleged to have done, and it's a fair question to ask.

- I mean, on the flip side, Bruce, you know, the thing to consider, to keep in mind too.

I mean, we have to presume he's innocent until proven guilty, of course.

- Right.

- But you know, the US attorney's office in Springfield, they have had a bit of a checkered past in terms of some of these public corruption cases.

I mean, they've been quite effective, they were under the Blagojevich era, in prosecuting state grant fraud cases.

But the most recent high profile public corruption case they took on involved former congressman Aaron Schock.

And that wound up, you know, just completely unraveling.

And so, in this case, you know, it's, I think, I'll be quite interested in seeing who Senator McCann winds up getting as a lawyer here, and what their credentials are, and how capable they are in fighting this.

- And that's an excellent point, Dave, he is innocent until proven guilty, and the Schock investigation did entirely unravel.

There are still, with regard to Aaron Schock, there's legalities, and there's also the sniff test.

And you'll recall the fancy office, well, garishly decorated, and Instagram photos from all over the world.

And Aaron Schock was kind of, he flew too close to the sun, maybe.

Not just in a legalistic sense, but it just didn't look good.

And there have been questions about how the US attorney's office did handle that investigation.

It went, as I recall, it was transferred out of the local juris, out of Illinois, up to higher ups, I believe, even in Washington, DC.

And it was taken out of the Springfield office.

And so, the point well taken.

He is innocent until proven guilty.

Moving on for a second, let's talk about some constitutional things that the Republicans wanna do to make us a better government state.

Kent, you're more up on this than perhaps I am.

What do they wanna do?

And is it a good idea?

And does it have any chance whatsoever?

- Well, you, in order to get constitutional amendments on the ballot, you have to get a supermajority.

So, you know, and it is unlikely that the Democrats are going to give up, you know, the status quo.

But we're talking about a change in the recall provision to allow you to recall public officials at all levels, not just the governor.

A provision that would allow voters to petition to essentially overturn a specific law.

In this case, think about all of the outcry against the Criminal Justice Reform Act that was passed at the end of the lame duck session.

Under this provision, you could gather signatures, if it was approved to go on the ballot, that would essentially suspend the law at that point.

And if it did not win a majority, and if it were overturned by the voters, it would be stricken from the statute.

So the third one is to open up the Citizens' Initiative for Constitutional Amendments, which is, right now, you can have a limited ability to amend the legislative article.

You can't amend any of the other articles.

This would open up the constitution for amendments to provide property tax caps, spending limits, you could go into the education article where it says the state has the primary responsibility to fund education, which the court has ruled as basically being aspirational and unenforceable.

And you could put in language that said, the state's, you know, responsible for 50% of the operating costs of all public, you know, K through 12 schools.

So, it's a very, very broad power.

You know, you can, you know, the things that I might want to have put into the constitution might not be, you know, it might not be things other people approve with.

The problem with amending the constitution is you're stuck, and we were stuck with limits on counties, and municipalities to incurring debt, and raising property taxes.

And that produced, you know, all of the special districts that we have in Illinois.

Park districts, library districts, mosquito abatement districts.

So, you know, you can make mistakes that you have to live with for a hundred years when you amend the constitution.

So, you know, it's worth discussing, but it's, from a practical sense, you know, it's not gonna happen.

You know, the general assembly is not gonna put these things on the ballot, under the control of the Democrats.

- But we can dream, can't we?

Let's, I mean.

- I mean, I think about the only place that, well, like, the only entity that's gonna truly be behind that are the TV station operators, because, you know, any kind of ballot initiative, any kind of, you know.

(Bruce laughing) You know, hundreds of millions of dollars in ads.

So, but yeah, you know, if these were serious efforts, they would have involved Democrats in the rollout, and they didn't, so they're more simply just to kinda raise a ruckus a little bit by Republicans, and good for them, but they don't have serious traction - They don't have serious traction, that's true, but they're not necessarily wrong, in this sense, that you look at states, the progressive states, such as Washington state, Oregon, and California, and they do have some of these things, there is a real power of initiative and referendum that's held by voters.

And it has made a difference in some of those states in terms of getting actually good government legislation passed.

In Washington state, for example, that's how their version FOIA from the 1970s, it wasn't the legislature that said, open up government records.

It was folks that's actually back then before the internet, they stood on street corners, gathered signatures, and thereby came about one of the stronger public records laws in the entire United States.

Shoreline Management Act, environmental issues, they also did that in Washington state.

They legalized cannabis in Washington state through a citizen initiative.

Granted, it's not gonna happen, but it would be, some folks would say maybe it would be nice to have that check, perhaps on elected officials.

- Well, I mean, on the flip side, though, I think you would find a lot of public sector unions who would disagree with you, because, you know, imagine if there were groups, you know, some of the business groups that decided, well, hey, we wanna get rid of the provision, the pension clause in the state constitution, because we're tired of paying the compounding COLA.

And that would be a very real threat.

I think that, I get the idea about, you know, giving, you know, empowering voters with another tool.

But I think that the concept introduces a whole new level of chaos into a system that, you know, doesn't seem to operate under any, you know, clear-cut set of rules to begin with, you know?

And I think that, like, I do think that there's a, you know, the idea of a vote for a legislator, or a vote for a governor oughta mean something.

And these legislative bodies, we've set them up to make laws and to strike down laws.

And that oughta be where the focus is at, you know, getting people elected that support a cause.

And then, you know, getting that cause passed through a legislature.

And I get the legislatures aren't responsive, they don't wanna do things that affect their own interests, for example, transparency, or as we were talking about earlier in the show, with, you know, serious reform for campaign finance.

But, you know, we already have a system set up in place.

Maybe it's not working the best, but like, I would really be concerned that you could have all these kinds of efforts just zooming in from all over the place that would inject all sorts of chaos into our lives.

- True, true, and that's a point well taken.

On the other hand, though, you take something like public sector union, you know, pension benefits, you know, it's constitutionally protected, but there's also a strong argument that it's also protected by contracts clauses outside of any kind of a constitutional guarantee.

That once you have made a deal with somebody, you've made a deal with somebody, and you can't pull the rug out from underneath them.

So, I'm not sure that that I'll buy that as much as on other levels, because I think the concern is, is that you start legislating through who could pay the most signature gatherers, and have the biggest TV campaign, you know, campaigns you want.

- Yeah.

Certainly been the case in terms of California.

I mean, petition drives favor the organized and the wealthy, and that's not just citizens groups, that's extremely large corporations, extremely wealthy individuals.

Now, you can put in relief, you know, you can put in kind of pressure valves.

So, but you know, if you look at Washington's law, it's a lot broader than what we're talking about today.

- Yeah, unfortunately, we spent a lot of time talking about Senator McCann and we left other things on the table, and we're just about out of time.

I wish we could've talked, my fault, could've spent more time talking about vaccines.

Now politicians are gonna get vaccinated, so they can go back and make laws up.

But we'll have to talk about that another time, and welcome or thank you, everybody, for joining us on "Capitol View," see you next week.

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