SPRING VALLEY – Happy's Super Service Station in Spring Valley, Illinois, provided a reported $213,338.31 in gas and vehicle repairs over 10 years to Illinois' new Auditor General Frank Mautino, which has drawn national attention in Forbes.com.
The hundreds of thousands of dollars Mautino spent at Happy's since 2005 averaged about $20,000 a year. That's either a whole lot of gas or Mautino's campaign vehicles are lemons – all of them.
Mautino was a member of the House Speaker Mike Madigan's Democrat leadership, but now he is Illinois' new Auditor General – the person responsible for scouring Illinois' spending for any discrepancies.
Not only did longtime Democrats vote to promote their colleague to the Auditor General spot, so did Republicans – because their leadership pressured them to make Mautino's approval bi-partisan.
"Now, Frank Mautino faces scrutiny – not from political groups – but from citizen watchdogs," Adam Andrzejewski writes in Forbes.
"Yesterday, the noted downstate accountability group – the Edgar County Watchdogs – quantified $213,338.31 in campaign gas and vehicle repairs paid from Mautino’s political committee since 2005 into one hometown vendor: Happy’s Super Service Station in Spring Valley," Andrzejewski writes. "The 'gas' and 'gas and vehicle repairs' averaged $20,000 per year or roughly $55 per day over the last ten years and nine months.
Remember Aaron Schock and the questions raised about his campaign vehicle expenditures? Schock's no longer a congressman.
"How many brand-new cars with full warranties could Mautino have purchased with $213,338 in reported 'gas' and 'gas and vehicle repairs'?" Andrzejewski writes. "How many vehicle gas-tanks hold 79 gallons or how many times does an engine-transmission fail?"
More at Forbes.com
