Former Illinois lawmaker indicted for bribery

A former Illinois state lawmaker was indicted Wednesday on federal bribery charges that he paid thousands of dollars to win $4 million in contracts with a suburban Chicago rail system.

Roger Stanley, a former Republican state representative, is a mail consultant whose companies have done thousands of dollars worth of business with Illinois House members.

According to prosecutors, a total of $130,000 was paid to Donald Udstuen, a former member of the Metra commuter rail organization's board of directors.

Udstuen, also the former chief lobbyist for the Illinois State Medical Society, was charged in May with tax fraud conspiracy along with two other men, including a close friend to Gov. George Ryan.

Two other men were charged in Wednesday's five-count indictment: Stanley's business partner, Robert Doyle, and attorney Stanley Stewart.

Stewart, currently assistant general counsel in the Illinois Office of Banks and Real Estate, allegedly served as a conduit to disguise the illegal payments.

"Bribing public officials is an unacceptable way of doing business. It is particularly disturbing when, as alleged in this case, the bribery takes place over more than a decade," U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said.

The charges are an outgrowth of the government's four-year Operation Safe Road investigation, which began with disclosures that bribes were paid in exchange for Illinois drivers licenses. Recently, it has focused on other corruption when Ryan was secretary of state. The governor has not been charged with any wrongdoing. So far, 57 people have been indicted in the investigation.

Metra is a 495-mile public rail system that serves six counties in the Chicago area. It differs from the Chicago Transit Authority, which runs the city's famous elevated trains.

You might be interested in this little tidbit from Crain's Chicago Business:

GOP leader doled out office help
Daniels staffers popped up in key House races

June 17, 2002
By Greg Hinz

With the state paying for their time and transportation, virtually the entire Chicago staff of Illinois House Republican Leader Lee Daniels spent much of the spring and summer of 2000 in and near House districts with hotly contested general election races.

In one instance, state records indicate that between May 1 and Aug. 31, nine Daniels staffers collectively traveled 252 times to southwest suburban Mokena, where incumbent GOP Rep. Renee Kosel would later hang onto her seat by just 131 votes.

Six other staffers reported visiting Rockford - just west of the site of a close McHenry County race - a total of 121 times in the same period.

In other instances, according to internal Daniels office records made available to Crain's by a ranking Republican insider, staffers spent weeks at a time working in key contested races.

In some cases, these workers submitted expense vouchers to the state comptroller's office for travel to the office of the incumbent Republican candidate. In many other cases, where the Republican candidate was the challenger, vouchers were submitted for travel to the office of a nearby GOP incumbent.

Greg Durham, Mr. Daniels spokesman, denies that the office used government funds to pay for political activities. Any government-funded time or travel went for legitimate constituent service and legislative work, though some employees may have stayed late at a daytime assignment so they could "volunteer" for campaign duties, he adds.

Otherwise, when staffers worked on campaigns, they took compensatory time or unpaid leaves of absence or did the work on weekends, Mr. Durham says.

But the two Republicans who represent the Rockford area, Reps. Ron Wait and David Winters, say they know of no reason why much staff time would have been spent in their area, except for two or three days of legislative hearings that summer.

A former Daniels staffer who asked not to be named says that the payroll records are accurate and reflect the fact that, after late spring of 2000, the Chicago staff did little but work on political campaigns. The staffer worked for Mr. Daniels, who also is the state Republican chairman, throughout 2000.

Richard Means, a Chicago election lawyer who independently obtained many of the same records, says if Mr. Daniels does not provide a better explanation, he will seek to discover if state funds have been improperly used for political purposes. Mr. Means, some of whose clients have challenged incumbents backed by Mr. Daniels and other state GOP powers, says he first will ask Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan to investigate, but will file his own suit if need be.

State law bars employees from collecting government salaries or reimbursements for political work, says David Morrison, coordinator of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a civic group.

A day in May

At the center of the questions about Mr. Daniels' staffers are copies of office "call-in sheets" obtained by Crain's. The sheets track about two dozen workers in Mr. Daniels' Loop office during the spring and summer of 2000, specifying when they called in each day and where they were.

On Wednesday, May 3, for instance, eight staffers were logged in Chicago at around 8:30 a.m. Seven others were in the field at times from 7:05 a.m. to past noon: two in McHenry County, two at "O'Connor's," one in Lake Forest in the morning and Chicago in the afternoon; one in Lansing, and the seventh in Tinley Park in the afternoon.

McHenry County is where Republican Thomas Salvi was trying to reclaim a seat lost to a Democrat in 1998. "O'Connor's" refers to Rep. William O'Connor, R-Riverside, who faced a stiff re-election challenge; Lansing is the hometown of 79th District GOP hopeful Robert West, and Tinley Park is where Republican Maureen Bekta was running to retake a seat the GOP had controlled until 1996. The latter district abuts Mokena to the east. Lake Forest is on the North Shore, site of two close races in 2000.

Between May 1 and Sept. 30, the call-in sheets indicate Daniels staffers spent hundreds of days in such districts. Spokesman Mr. Durham says the sheets are "of dubious origin" since Mr. Daniels keeps all payroll records "electronically." He declined to release copies of the electronic versions, calling them "confidential personnel records."

However, Mr. Durham also says he does not know whether the information on the call-in sheets is accurate or not, since office supervisors set their own call-in policies and no central list is kept.

But the call-in sheets are consistent with GOP campaign records. In late summer, the Daniels-headed House Republican Campaign Committee began partially reimbursing staffers who used compensatory time off to work in campaigns. The list of which staffer worked for which candidate is included in the committee's economic disclosure at the end of 2000, and jibes with the call-in tally of who was where.

In many cases, staffers working campaigns in the south and southwest suburbs submitted travel vouchers for Mokena, where Ms. Kosel has her office. Staffers working in the North Shore and McHenry County races submitted many vouchers for travel to Rockford and, less frequently, Antioch and Wauconda.

Daniels policy analyst Joseph Caccitolo is listed at "Bekta" or "Tinley Park," where Ms. Bekta resides, 23 times on call-in sheets from late July through late August. In the same five-week period, he submitted 20 vouchers for travel to Mokena at a cost of $30.38 a day.

Mr. Caccitolo says he has done nothing wrong but would not discuss a "2-year-old record I do not have in front of me." Ms. Bekta declined comment.

Policy analyst David Fox, working for Mr. Salvi's campaign in McHenry County, is recorded on the call-in sheets as being in McHenry, Crystal Lake or Rockford 21 times in May. He submitted travel expenses to Rockford 20 times that month.

Mr. Fox no longer is with the office and was unavailable for comment. Mr. Salvi says Mr. Fox helped with his campaign but says all sides, to his knowledge, kept government time separate from politics.

Possible explanation

Mr. Durham says the 121 trips to Rockford may have come from staffers helping local officials develop Illinois First grant applications that summer. Staffers were also organizing public hearings that "may have taken more time" than Reps. Wait and Winters realize.

That explanation also applies to the 252 Mokena trips, says Mr. Durham, adding that Ms. Kosel is a particularly dutiful lawmaker whose district's population grew significantly during the 1990s.

Ms. Kosel says she spent much of that summer at the bedside of a dying relative. She recalls that Mr. Daniels provided her with staff help during the period, but she doesn't know why travel records show that as many as five staffers visited her office between June 2 and Aug. 24.

Mr. Durham notes that the office stopped approving travel vouchers on Sept. 1 and reimbursed workers out of Mr. Daniels' campaign fund. "Labor Day is when the campaign really gets going," he says.

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