From the News Gazette

Winkel fulfills pledge on Ryan funding
By KATE CLEMENTS
© 2005 THE NEWS-GAZETTE
Published Online February 15, 2005

   SPRINGFIELD – State Sen. Rick Winkel, R-Urbana, has quietly given $500 to every school district and library district he represents, fulfilling a pledge he made a year and a half ago to donate money he got from former Gov. George Ryan's campaign fund to charity.
   Citizens for Ryan was convicted as a criminal enterprise under the federal racketeering law in March 2003.
   Winkel, who won several hotly-contested elections for the Illinois House in the past decade, had accepted nearly twice as much money from Citizens for Ryan as any other state lawmaker – $24,500. While many of those lawmakers returned donations from Citizens for Ryan when the fund started to get into legal trouble, Winkel resisted political pressure to follow suit.
   "I am going to wait and see what the prosecutors and the courts do," he said at the time. "If the George Ryan campaign is found guilty as charged, then my campaign committee will donate a sum to charity equal to the amount that it received." When the fund was convicted, Winkel had just finished an expensive battle to win election to the Senate and had less than $200 in his campaign account. In a News-Gazette article published in August 2003, Winkel said the donations would have to wait but that he had not forgotten his pledge.
   On Dec. 15, 2004, Winkel gave $500 to the Danville Library Foundation, according to his latest campaign disclosure statement, which covered the period from July 1, 2004, to the end of the year.
   Winkel said the rest of the donations were made after the start of the year and will appear in his next campaign disclosure statement, which will cover the period between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2005.
   "I made a commitment to donate $24,500, which is the amount that my campaign committee received from Citizens for George Ryan several years ago," Winkel wrote in an e-mail to The News-Gazette. "I fulfilled that obligation by contributing to every public library and school district in the area I represent, to the Boys & Girls clubs in Champaign-Urbana and Danville, and to Parkland College, Danville Area Community College, and the University of Illinois. I asked that the funds be used to buy library books."
   Winkel said he gave $500 each to 18 library districts, 23 school districts, two regional offices of education, and two Boys and Girls Clubs. He gave $1,000 each to the UI, Parkland and DACC.
   The donations totaled $25,500.
   Vermilion County Regional Superintendent Jim Trask said he received a check from Winkel's campaign fund about two or three weeks ago, and planned to use the money to buy library books for the safe school located on Georgetown Road.
   "He had called and told me that this is what he was doing because of his pledge," Trask said.
   June Highsmith, co-director of Philo Public Library, said she was surprised to get a check from Winkel's campaign fund enclosed in a letter dated Jan. 20.
   "It's the first time we've ever gotten a contribution like that from a political source that I can recall, and I've been here 40 years," Highsmith said.
   She said the donations to help buy library books were "a good way to handle" the question of what to do with the Ryan campaign funds.
   Urbana school spokeswoman Kathy Wallig said all that district's $500 went to the library at Yankee Ridge Elementary.
   "They had some significant water damage to their collection," Wallig said. "They were just thrilled to get the donation."
   
You can reach News-Gazette Capitol bureau chief Kate Clements at (217) 782-2486 or via e-mail at kclements@news-gazette.com.