EDITORIAL: Corrupt former politicians still collecting state pensions

Feb. 24—Don’t expect a notoriously uninterested Legislature to close these loopholes.

Illinoisans have been told for years that, as a general proposition, elected officials convicted in corruption cases forfeit their public pensions.

That is, in fact, sometimes the case. Former Govs. George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich were stripped of their pensions following their corruption convictions and imprisonments. That’ll happen to former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan if he’s found guilty when he goes to trial next year in the Commonwealth Edison bribery conspiracy case.

But, as with pretty much everything else in this state, it’s important to delve into the details of each corruption case, because things are not always as they appear to be.

WBEZ public radio in Chicago recently took a look behind the curtain and found that the state has sent out “nearly $2 million in state retirement checks” that continue to go to “a mix of federally charged, convicted and self-admitted felons who once served under the Capitol dome in Springfield” or their family members.

Two shocking examples are former state Sen. Terry Link of Vernon Hills and the late state Sen. Martin Sandoval of Chicago.

Link pleaded guilty to federal income-tax evasion. He acknowledged using money from his campaign fund and not paying taxes on it over a four-year period. (Incidentally, this is the same guy who voted to raise taxes on the rest of us.)

Sandoval pleaded guilty to accepting bribes and was scheduled to be an important government witness when he died. His wife collects his pension.

Link, Sandoval and others are collecting pension because, as WBEZ explained, the General Assembly System Retirement Board, acting on the advice of Attorney General Kwame Raoul, found that they were entitled to the pensions because their corrupt acts were not related to their work as public officials.

That explanation, on its face, is ridiculous. If Link wasn’t a public official, he wouldn’t have had a campaign fund to use as a personal piggy bank. If Sandoval hadn’t been a member of the Illinois Senate, he wouldn’t have been in a position to take bribes to see that favor-seekers got what they wanted from local and state governments.

But even assuming those pretexts were not in play, it’s outrageous that those who betray the public trust continue to be subsidized by the taxpayers after they’ve been forced out of public life in shame.

For example, WBEZ reported that Link, who left office in 2020, has collected “$200,000 and counting.”

It goes without saying that any rules this lax or easily subject to misinterpretation need to be rewritten in a way that holds all public officials responsible on the corruption issue.

The question, of course, is whether members of the Illinois House and Senate who are notoriously uninterested in adopting real ethics rules will have the initiative to deal with the pension issue in a sensible way.

One can always hope, of course, that legislators will be shamed into taking action. But hope that Illinois legislators will do the right thing when it comes to protecting their financial self-interest hasn’t gotten much done in the past.