East St. Louis official Alvin Parks owes election board $150,000. He only has $8.85.
East St. Louis Township Supervisor Alvin Parks’ bid to appear on future election ballots was derailed Tuesday when his campaign fund left him well short of being able to pay off $150,000 in fines to the state.
Parks showed up in Springfield believing the fund had $8,600 which he could use to settle with the Illinois Elections Board. Due to reporting errors, however, he actually had just $8.85.
Either way, Parks remains well short of the $149,560 he owes due to repeated failures to file campaign contribution reports going back to 2011, when he was mayor of East St. Louis. He appeared before the election board to appeal a ban that will keep him off an election ballot until the fines are paid.
The board denied that appeal.
Parks said his main goal is the clear his name, adding that he also wants to run in the April 2020 primary election ballot for Precinct 24 committeeman, a seat he held for 16 years before the state revoked his certification. He said Tuesday he was not deterred by the election board’s decision and plans to appear at its next meeting on Thursday, Jan. 9.
“Based on everything I heard today, I think I know how to make it a better offer,” he said.
Board of elections spokesman Matt Dietrich said the board agreed that an offer closer to 50 percent of what is owed would give Parks a better chance at reaching a settlement.
Dietrich said board members decided that accepting the $8,613.85 from Citizens to Elect Alvin Parks Jr. would have represented “flagrant disregard” for the board’s disclosure system and would set a “horrible precedent” for future cases.
State law requires political committees or politicians to file reports every time a contribution of more than $1,000 is made. Parks stopped filing the campaign contribution reports in 2011 and was fined $5,000 each time. He was fined again in August for failure to report, according to state board meeting minutes.
Parks, because he owes fines, cannot be certified for elections, meaning he cannot appear on the ballot even if he files for office. Through a “loophole” he was able to pay fines levied between 2011 and 2018 without filing the actual reports, according to documents obtained from the board of elections.
During that time Parks, was reelected in 2011 without having filed a financial report.
The loophole was closed in 2017 when the board imposed new rules for reporting. Committees now can levy maximum fines when reports were “sufficiently late.” For Parks’ committee, that amounted to roughly $5,000 for two or more reports that were not filed.
Illinois Board of Elections Division of Campaign Disclosure Director Tom Newman wrote in his report to the board that if each unfiled report had been considered separately, Parks could have been fined an additional $70,000.
Since being established in 2006, Parks’ committee has paid $59,395. Those payments have gone entirely toward paying fines for late filings and other violations of State Election Board orders.
Parks said even if he never runs for office again, he’d like to settle his fines with the elections board.
“I’d like to clear my name and I feel as if we’ve gone a long way toward doing that,” Parks said. “Even if I never run for office again beyond this precinct committeeman election, it’s good to have the option.”
Parks did not rule out running for reelection in his current role as East St. Louis Township supervisor.
“I don’t know that I’ll be pursuing that again but perhaps something else a little bit down the road,” Parks said on Dec. 2. “I don’t know what those other things might be but the first thing is you definitely want to clear your name and that’s a big thing I want to accomplish.”
When he was elected supervisor, he owed roughly $95,000 in administrative fines to the state, but due to uncertainty at the state board about how to enforce unpaid fines, he was allowed to remain on the ballot and won the election.
This story was originally published December 17, 2019 at 4:09 PM.