The former chief of staff to former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan will have his six-figure state pension suspended Friday after being found guilty. sentencing For lying before a federal grand jury.
The State Retirement Commission, which oversees pension benefits for current and retired state employees, will also recommend to Democratic Attorney General Kwame Raoul whether former Madigan chief of staff Timothy Mapes' pension should be permanently revoked. I'm looking for it.
Mapes' annual taxpayer-funded pension is currently $154,409, according to records maintained by the State Employees' Retirement System (SERS).
That total puts Mr. Mapes in the top 10th of the highest 1% of pensioners in the system, records show.
SERS' move comes as part of thwarting a federal investigation into Madigan, a Democrat who was sentenced in mid-February to 2 1/2 years in prison for lying under oath before a federal grand jury. That was the trigger.
In sentencing Mr. Mapes, U.S. District Judge John Kunes noted Mr. Mapes' loyalty to Mr. Madigan and to Michael McClain, a former convicted confidant of the Speaker.grave misdirection”
Illinois' pension law allows for the revocation of state retirement benefits if a legislator or other government employee is convicted of criminal misconduct arising from their official duties.
However, how Mapes' case fits into that legal framework is open to legal question.
The lies he was convicted of occurred in 2021, nearly three years after he was forced to retire from the state payroll. However, Mapes was being questioned about the circumstances surrounding his employment as Madigan's chief of staff, a crime for which he was convicted.
Mapes' attorney, Andrew Porter, declined to comment about Mapes and his state pension when contacted by WBEZ.
And in a brief statement to WBEZ, Raul's office acknowledged receiving SERS' request for an opinion on Mapes, but declined to say when it would submit a pension recommendation to the state retirement board. There wasn't.
SERS records show Mr Mapes began receiving state pension benefits in July 2018, weeks after Mr Madigan was fired. Mr. Mapes' firing came after his subordinate accused him of bullying and dismissed multiple charges of sexual harassment by members of Congress against her and other women.
2019 report The book, written by former state inspector general Maggie Hickey, also states that “the number of independently verified instances of Mr. Mapes' derogatory conduct was overwhelming.” Mr. Mapes was known for slandering workers and threatening their jobs. ”
The city's top watchdog group told WBEZ that Mapes' conviction for lying to a federal grand jury about his tenure as Madigan's chief of staff, regardless of when he lied, will result in a retirement paid for by taxpayers. He said this was sufficient reason to strip the subsidy.
“He colluded himself by perjury in an after-the-fact manner, and the message that that sends to everyone is, you can't be around, you can't be involved in ongoing illegal activity, And you can't expect yourself to escape consequences,” said Citizens United President Joe Ferguson, a former federal prosecutor and former Chicago inspector general.
“On the one hand, he's going to go to prison for a meaningful period of time,” Ferguson said of Mapes. “But for other people looking at this, it's probably like, 'Well, it won't be that long, he's keeping his pension, and at the end of the day, he's fine.'” Such calculations are not possible here. We have to say, “No, you lose your freedom for a certain period of time, and Because of your participation in all of this, you will be stripped of your entire pension. ”
Mapes receives a monthly pension of $12,867, according to SERS records. During Mr. Mapes' more than 40-year career in state government, he contributed $176,962 in pension funds. Since 2018, he has largely recouped his contributions by receiving $799,480 in state pension benefits.
Mr. Raul's office has a track record of standing by former members of Congress who have been found guilty of misconduct after leaving office.
attorney general's office wrote an opinion in support of Former state Rep. Edward Acevedo (D-Chicago) and state Sen. Terry Link (D-Vernon Hills) were denied state pension benefits despite their convictions for federal felony tax evasion while in Congress. Regarding the recognition of receiving benefits.
The General Assembly's Retirement Systems Committee ultimately supported Mr. Raul's legal claims in both cases.
In another case that may have legal similarities to the Mapes situation, the GARS Committee I voted against that advice. Then-Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office concluded that former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert should be allowed to maintain his parliamentary pension.
Former Attorney General Madigan's argument was that the financial crimes Hastert admitted to and was convicted of were unrelated to his time as a state representative in the 1980s. Mr. Hastert admitted in 2015 that he tried to frame bank withdrawals to avoid disclosure as part of a cover-up for payments to men he sexually abused when he was a student decades ago.
But the state GARS board shelved Mr. Madigan's conclusion and voted to terminate Mr. Hastert's legislative pension anyway, a move later supported by a Sangamon County judge.
In its opinions on Acevedo and Hastert, the Attorney General's Office cited three tests that courts have used to determine whether criminal conduct is related to a public official's duties.
The first test asks whether a person would have had standing to commit a felony “but for'' his or her status as a public official. The second question asks whether the person's service in public office was a “material and substantial factor” in the crime.
The second paragraph of Mapes' federal indictment states that he was “Chief of Staff to Public Employee A” (a nickname given to Madigan in court).
The court's third test is whether the conviction is “related in any way” to the person's employment.
Ferguson said he hopes Raoul's office does not go down the path his predecessor, Lisa Madigan, took with Hastert, saying Mapes' misconduct does not meet the legal criteria for pension cancellation. He claimed not to have done so.
“As is often the case in Illinois, things were interpreted in a kind of minimalist way,” Ferguson said of Lisa Madigan's opinion of Hastert. The results reflect the principles. ”
“I think this is exactly what's going on here. Are we going to address this technically or are we going to clearly say that what we have is effectively aiding and abetting a public corruption conspiracy after the fact?” It's a question of whether we're going to do it on the basis of a principled justification,''' Ferguson said.
Dave McKinney covers Illinois government and politics for WBEZ and was the longtime Springfield bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times. Sun-Times federal court reporter John Seidel contributed to this report.
