Former State Rep. Ron Sandack with House Minority Leader Jim Durkin | Sun-Times photo
DOWNERS GROVE – Last week's redacted police report concerning former State Rep. Ron Sandack's reason for suddenly resigning from the Illinois House last month stirred more questions rather than putting the issue to rest.
Despite Sandack's substantial list of allies commenting on Illinois Review and elsewhere that the whole matter is now private and none of the public's business, five Chicago area news sources appealed to the Downers Grove Police Department to release un-redacted versions of Sandack's complaint. The village's attorney refused the news sources requests.
What were the Downers Grove officials to do? Sandack's history with the village is substantial.
Ron Sandack served on the Downers Grove Village Council from 2001 until he became mayor of Downers Grove in 2007. He served a four year term as the village's mayor before being appointed to succeed Dan Cronin when he left the Illinois Senate to become DuPage County Board chairman.
Then instead of opposing Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno in their newly-drawn 2012 overlapping district, Sandack gained points when he chose to move to the Illinois House. There he was rewarded by the newly-chosen Minority Leader Jim Durkin with an appointment to leadership – where Sandack led as GOP floor spokesman and became Governor Rauner's right hand man in the IL House.
With that political background, Downers Grove attorney Enza Petrarca notified news sources that their FOIAs requesting the un-redacted police report were being rejected based on Section 7 of the Freedom of Information Act:
Section 7 (1)(c) that allows redactions for "information that if disclosed would constitute an unwarranted invasion of person privacy" may be the most relevant part of the law to which Petrarca points.
Raising the question, would that conclusion be the same if the person at the center of the controversy were anyone else than now-private citizen Sandack?
No one in the legislature is willing to talk about the video embarrassment or go on record about what they may have seen in a posted video between Sandack and the young woman.
Thus, Friday's story in Politico has come as close as possible to getting to the real story.
Politico's Natasha Korecki refers in her story about the FOIA appeals to an alleged video of a Skype conversation between Rep. Sandack and a young woman that Politico reports included "sexually graphic" material.
At the Republican National Convention, the Politico story says, the buzz was that "some people had unwittingly viewed a sexually graphic video featuring Sandack that was temporarily posted on Facebook" when Sandack delayed paying a second payment of what an alleged overseas extortion ring demanded.
Two Republican sources say as a result Sandack was pressured to resign, but Sandack denies that assertion, Korecki says.
There is no question that Republicans want the whole embarrassing story to go away – quickly.
