By Dave Dahl/Illinois Radio Network

SPRINGFIELD – If you’ve followed news out of the Capitol over the last several years, you may have heard or read something about “a scathing report from Auditor General Bill Holland.”

Holland’s retiring, and, as the choice to succeed him points out, the office has a megaphone but no enforcement mechanism.

“I’ve been on the Audit Commission since 1997,” Frank Mautino said. “I’ve reviewed 2,000 audits and 8,000 findings that came through General Holland. The job of the auditor is to point out where dollars are being misspent or where an agency is not doing what it is supposed to do under the law. The auditors find where people are out of compliance.The General Assembly fixes them. That is the proper mix.”

Mautino, a lawmaker since 1991, is the survivor from among four finalists interviewed by the Legislative Audit Commission. The General Assembly must vote – 3/5 in each chamber – whether he will succeed Holland.

Mautino, who survived a close 2014 election and a 2015 of treatments for esophageal cancer, said neither of those points moved him to try to get a new job; in fact, he says, he has been circulating petitions for a 2016 run.

He said there’s one thing in common between the auditor general’s office, the legislature, and his family’s more-than-century-old liquor distributorship: serving people.