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 More than a year after federal authorities mounted a massive
corruption probe in Illinois, a guilty plea from a once-powerful state lawmaker
will likely mark the ongoing investigation’s first conviction.
On Jan. 28, a federal court convicted Sandoval for taking $250,000 in bribes
from a controversial red-light camera company and other “participants,”
according to his plea agreement, as well as filing a false tax return. Sandoval
pleaded guilty and has agreed to cooperate with federal investigators in an
escalating probe into Illinois political corruption.
Sandoval, who formerly headed the powerful Illinois Senate Transportation
Committee, faces up to 10 years in prison for the bribery charge and up to three
years for the tax fraud charge, for a maximum 13 years in prison. Prosecutors
said they’d request a reduced sentence in exchange for Sandoval’s cooperation,
according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Sandoval’s guilty plea comes one day after federal prosecutors indicted the
former lawmaker, charging that he “corruptly solicited” and accepted money from
the red-light camera vendor in exchange for influencing legislation in its favor
and opposing legislation that threatened the industry’s interests between 2016
and 2019.
Sandoval also pleaded guilty to filing a federal income tax return on which he
“substantially” underreported his total income at $125,905 in 2017, despite
earning nearly $260,000.
The state senator’s rhetoric was often at odds with this behavior.
“It’s absurd that families who are struggling to make ends meet are paying the
same income tax rate as the wealthiest residents of our state,” Sandoval said
after voting for Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s progressive income tax amendment last
spring.
“It’s long past time to implement a fair and equitable tax system that will
provide relief to middle and working class taxpayers who have been carrying an
undue financial burden in this state.”
While Pritzker and others describe the $3.7 billion tax hike as a “fair tax,”
opponents have blasted the plan as a “blank check” for Springfield corruption.
Red-light red flags
According to the plea agreement, Sandoval in 2016 offered to use his political
power to support the business interests of “Company A” in return for $20,000 in
annual contributions. The two parties collaborated on several occasions to
transfer the funds piecemeal and through alternate entities, in an attempt to
obscure the source of the payments.
While the agreement did not name Company A, Sandoval let it slip in his court
hearing that it was red-light cameras operator SafeSpeed LLC.
“I used my office as state senator to help SafeSpeed — er, company A … (and) be
its protector in the Illinois Senate and influence other officials to roll out
the red-light camera program in Illinois,” Sandoval said, according to the
Chicago Tribune.
In 2017, according to the document, Sandoval accepted $10,000 from Company A
explicitly to use his position in the Illinois Senate to block legislation that
would have banned red-light cameras in Illinois.
The plea agreement also recounts a 2018 meeting between Sandoval and his Company
A contact in which Sandoval expressed frustration over having not been offered a
paid consultant position, like some other officeholders have taken.
“I’ll go balls to the walls for anything you ask me…. It’s hard for me to
swallow how [people] make so much off of you. Right? And I gotta do the work,”
Sandoval said. He went on to describe himself as the red-light camera industry’s
“protector” in the Illinois Senate, before successfully persuading the company
to pay him $5,000 a month in “protector fees.”
In total, Sandoval accumulated over $250,000 in bribes, according to the report.
It is not clear whether those bribes came entirely from red-light camera
companies.
 Closing in on corruption
In September 2019, a series of raids involving the FBI and IRS targeted the home
and offices of Sandoval, seeking information in part on SafeSpeed, a politically
connected red-light camera company whose executives had for years generously
furnished Sandoval’s political war chest.
In 2017, a Chicago Tribune investigation found Sandoval used his position as
chair of the transportation committee to pressure the Illinois Department of
Transportation into reversing its denial of the installation of SafeSpeed
cameras at intersections the agency had determined to be safe. A year later,
Sandoval received the largest political donation in SafeSpeed’s history.
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An Illinois Policy Institute investigation found
that red-light camera devices have taken in more than $1 billion in
fines from Illinois drivers since 2008, despite producing no
significant gains in traffic safety.
Sandoval resigned from his influential committee
chairmanship in October 2019, and from the Illinois Senate
altogether on Jan. 1.
Sandoval, whose conviction comes amid a sweeping federal
investigation into Illinois government corruption, was the fourth
high-profile Illinois officeholder indicted since the details of the
probe started to surface in 2019.
Federal authorities previously served state Rep. Luis Arroyo bribery
charges of his own in October, two months after hitting Sen. Tom
Cullerton with a 42-count embezzlement charge. In May, Chicago Ald.
Ed Burke, 14th Ward – the city’s longest-serving alderman – received
a 14-count indictment for allegedly attempting to strong-arm a fast
food franchisee into hiring his private law practice for property
tax work.
Crisis of clout
Sandoval is one of three state lawmakers who voted in favor of
Pritzker’s progressive income tax amendment last year who have since
been indicted on corruption charges, along with Democratic state
Sen. Tom Cullerton and former Democratic state Rep. Luis Arroyo.
Illinois voters will face the question of whether to scrap the
state’s constitutional flat income tax protection on Nov. 3. As
transportation committee chair, Sandoval also played a key role in
shepherding the $45 billion capital plan to Pritzker’s desk in June
2019. The plan doubled the state gas tax and increased a variety of
other taxes and fees, lifting Illinoisans’ total average state and
local gas tax burden to third-highest from 10th in the nation.
An Illinois Policy Institute report published that year detailed how
lawmakers could have spent $10 billion more on infrastructure
without hiking taxes. Among the Institute’s recommendations was
adopting a system similar to that of Virginia’s “SMART SCALE”
system, which prioritizes infrastructure investments based on an
objective and quantifiable cost-benefit analysis. Such a system
ensures that lawmakers invest in infrastructure projects based on
need, rather than politics or self-interest.
The charges brought against Sandoval only reinforce the need for
those proposed reforms to Illinois’ capital spending, as well as its
ethics laws.
Reversing the trend
As of 2019, eight states prohibit red-light cameras from issuing
traffic tickets while three states outlaw the devices altogether.
Pritzker, himself the subject of a federal investigation involving
tax fraud, campaigned in part on rooting out government corruption
in Illinois but has not committed to ending red-light camera
enforcement, according to the Springfield-based blog Capitol Fax.
While the governor’s rhetoric has yet to meet action, there are
numerous steps state lawmakers could take to clean up state
government. The following reforms, for example, would go a long way
toward curbing political corruption in Illinois, which costs the
state economy at least $550 million per year, according to Illinois
Policy Institute research:
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Adopting revolving door restrictions on state
lawmakers becoming lobbyists.
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Empowering the Illinois legislative inspector
general to investigate lawmaker corruption. As is, this muzzled
watchdog office must seek approval from a panel of state
lawmakers before opening investigations, issuing subpoenas and
even publishing summary reports.
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Mandating state lawmakers recuse themselves
from votes in which they have a conflict of interest. There is
no current state law or even parliamentary rule requiring
Illinois lawmakers to disclose a conflict of interest or to
excuse themselves from voting on issues where they have personal
or private financial interests.
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Reforming the Illinois House rules, which grant
more concentrated power to the House speaker than any other
legislative rules in the country.
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Passing a bipartisan constitutional amendment
to end politically drawn legislative maps in Illinois.
Experts on good government rank Illinois the
second-most corrupt state and Chicago the most corrupt city in the
nation. That level of impropriety has brought with it significant
economic stress and record-low levels of government trust.
To recover the state’s sordid national reputation, and help create
an environment ripe for economic growth, state leaders would be wise
to take the steps necessary to combat corruption in state
government, rather than leaving it to federal prosecutors to fill
that void.
And given the nature of Sandoval’s crimes in particular, perhaps a
worthwhile first step Springfield could take is following the lead
of the 11 states who’ve stopped penalizing drivers with faulty
red-light camera devices.
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