The former head of traffic safety for the Illinois Department of Transportation violated state ethics rules by using his position to obtain several free passes to NASCAR events, then lied to cover it up, according to a report investigators released Thursday.

The Office of Executive Inspector General recommended that Michael Stout be fired for requesting the passes from a consulting firm that received grants from IDOT to promote safety. Stout resigned in December while agency officials were reviewing the findings.

According to the report, the consulting firm organizes booths at the annual NASCAR events at the Chicagoland Speedway. IDOT employees distribute information about the importance of seat belt use and how to prevent impaired driving.

As part of this effort, Stout asked the firm to provide him with special passes to events in 2009 and 2010 that would provide access to the track, pit lane and garage area. He told the firm he was requesting the passes for IDOT employees in order to meet with NASCAR drivers and speedway executives and to conduct public relations work on behalf of the state.

But investigators found that several people who received passes did not work for the state. Stout acknowledged he acted dishonestly to get passes for acquaintances or former state employees. But Stout said he asked attendees to wear IDOT T-shirts in order to create a presence for the agency, arguing that constituted official business.

Stout said transportation agency officials had approved of him conducting business at NASCAR races, though they told investigators that they did not give Stout permission to ask for special passes, saying it would be improper.

Investigators said Stout committed official misconduct by requesting the passes and providing them to people who were not IDOT employees and were not conducting businesses on behalf of the state. Stout argued that he was allowed to give the passes to nonemployees because they did not cost the state anything, an idea ethics officers rejected.

Mr. Stout used the influence of his position to obtain the social benefits of gift giving, the report states. Plainly said, Mr. Stout sought to look like a big shot.

Ethics officers recommended that Stout should be fired because of the serious nature of his actions, his attempts to lie about what happened and previous disciplinary action. They passed their suggestion along to IDOT officials on Nov. 7, 2011. The agency asked for more time to review the report on Nov. 22. Stout submitted his resignation Dec. 12.

Stout had worked for the department since 2003. Records show he made more than $114,000 a year.

In his response to investigators, Stout said he disagreed with their findings and had evidence that pleads his case. But Stout said he would not release the information because it would expose state employees and citizens unnecessarily.

He attached his final performance evaluation, which was made just before he left state government. Supervisors said Stout exceeded expectations and helped Illinois traffic safety program become a model for the rest of the nation.

I can say with confidence that I left the Division of Traffic Safety in a far better condition than when I found it over seven years ago, Stout wrote. I will always cherish many of the friendships built over the past seven years. The time to move on has passed.

mcgarcia@tribune.com

Twitter @moniquegarcia

When Lyndon Johnson endorsed path-breaking civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s, he knew that he was irrevocably changing the Democratic Party. As he was affixing his signature to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he reportedly remarked to an aide that he was signing away the South for 50 years. President Obamas decision to endorse gay marriage may yield a similar outcome by weakening beyond repair his partys links with less educated, socially conservative white voters.

(For the record: what follows is a purely political analysis, not a critique of Obamas decision on the merits. Many years ago, after sustained reflection, I decided that there were no arguments against same-sex marriage that I could regard as compelling, and Ive publicly stated that conclusion more than once.)

Early last year, I noted that Obamas political advisors were tilting toward what I called a Colorado strategy for the reelection campaign. Their focus was on an emerging new Democratic majoritya coalition of young people, minorities, unmarried women, and upscale professionals. This tilt would come, I noted, at the expense of the Ohio strategymy shorthand for an effort focused on retaining support from white working class voters.

To be sure, this tilt toward Colorado as the electoral template was intended as a matter of emphasis rather than a flat-out rejection of Ohio alternative. After all, Obama won both Colorado-type states and Ohio-type states in 2008. It seemed reasonable to suppose that he could fortify the Partys new beachhead in the Rockies without jeopardizing his standing in the heartland, the traditional key to presidential contests.

The issue of gay marriage will test that optimism. Consider Ohio. The most recent Quinnipiac survey, conducted before the gay marriage announcement, showed the presidential race tiedObama 45, Romney 44. (Adding Rob Portman to the Republican ticket moved the race to a dead heat, 45 to 45.) If the prospect of gay marriage antagonizes older conservatives more than it mobilizes younger liberals, Ohio could shift back into the Republican column.

Or take North Carolina, one of the two rim-South states that the 2008 Obama campaign wrested from the Republicans. The state just passedby 61 to 39 percenta constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage. This suggests that about one-fifth of Obamas winning 2008 coalition disagrees with him on the issue. Its hard to know how many of these voters will regard the presidents support for gay marriage as a deal-breaker. But common sense suggests that it is likely to be more than enough to swamp Obamas 14,000-vote victory of four years ago.

One thing is clear: Obamas decision aligns the Democratic Party with the demographic future of the country. Young adults overwhelmingly support gay marriage, and theyre sure to win the fight by outliving their older adversaries. The only question is whether the future is now. Theres reason to believe it may not be: In 2008, Obama received 20 percent of the conservative vote, accounting for about 7 percentage points of his overall 53 percent share of the popular vote. (By contrast, McCain received only 10 percent of the liberal vote, accounting for only 2 points of his overall share.) Conservative democrats, in other words, provided the decisive margin in the last electiona margin that its not clear can be compensated for with additional liberals.

Ron Brownstein recently reported that Obamas senior advisors see the announcement as essentially a political wash, one that changes the composition of the presidents support but not its overall level. If a single national vote decided presidential elections, this would be a significant claim. But because presidential elections are an aggregate of state contests, the location of support also matters. Alas, as I look at the shrinking roster of swing states, I find it easier to foresee electoral college losses than gains.

William Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution an a contributing editor forThe New Republic.

CHONGQING, China — Police officers here are being investigated over whether they used torture and other questionable methods to obtain evidence during a so-called anticrime campaign overseen by Bo Xilai, the deposed Chinese leader who for four years ran the party machinery in this fog-shrouded western metropolis.

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The review of police actions was revealed in interviews with a lawyer in Beijing and a person in Chongqing with ties to police officials. It appears to be part of a deeper critical look at Mr. Bo’s reign in Chongqing and could be used to further tarnish his reputation.

The investigation, which has not been previously disclosed, formally began April 25, when Liu Guanglei, a top Chongqing party official in charge of the politics and law committee, said at a gathering of mid- and senior-level police officials that any officer who had tortured suspects during Mr. Bo’s campaign should admit to doing so. Mr. Liu told the group that if an officer were found later to have committed torture but had not been forthcoming, then the officer would be severely punished, according to the person with police ties, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the scandal surrounding Mr. Bo.

Mr. Bo’s campaign, called “strike black” or “smash the black,” was rolled out in June 2009 to great fanfare and engineered by Wang Lijun, a police officer from northeast China whom Mr. Bo had installed as the police chief here after he became party secretary in late 2007. Mr. Bo and Mr. Wang said the campaign was aimed at destroying crime gangs and their supporters in Chongqing, but critics and some people convicted during that time say the campaign was at least partly a cover to tear down Mr. Bo’s enemies and undermine private entrepreneurs.

But any inquiry into Mr. Bo’s actions before he was removed from his party chief post in Chongqing in March and suspended from the 25-member Politburo in April could become a tricky issue for senior party officials. Though Mr. Bo is being investigated by Beijing for “serious disciplinary violations,” officials looking specifically at the anticrime crackdown must tread carefully because several of China’s top leaders made a trip to Chongqing around the time of the campaign and publicly praised Mr. Bo for his efforts.

Xi Jinping, the vice president who is expected to replace Hu Jintao as the president of China, praised the crackdown and toured a museum exhibition dedicated to the campaign when he visited Chongqing in December 2010, according to a report at the time by Xinhua, the state news agency. The report has since been removed from Xinhua’s Web site.

With Mr. Bo’s purge, some victims of the “strike black” campaign, known as “da hei” in Chinese, have begun speaking publicly about being tortured, denied their rights and forced to endure horrendous prison conditions. Before he was taken into custody, Mr. Bo publicly defended the campaign, and many people here say Chongqing benefited from it. Nearly 4,800 people were arrested over 10 months.

“The gangs were bullying ordinary people,” said Qi Guoping, a resident. “The businesspeople were protecting them and trampling on poor people.”

A law professor at Chongqing University, Chen Zhonglin, said the problems of “da hei” had been exaggerated. For one thing, he said, law enforcement officials had brought in lawyers from across China to ensure defendants had proper representation. “I’m not saying there were no problems during the ‘da hei’ campaign,” he said, “but they weren’t as serious as in other places.”

Mr. Liu, who ordered the police inquiry, had been the police chief before Mr. Bo replaced him with Mr. Wang. Mr. Liu once worked under Mr. Hu, China’s top leader, and was said to be one target of a widespread wiretapping campaign run by Mr. Bo and Mr. Wang.

Some people persecuted during “da hei” were lawyers trying to defend those facing criminal charges. One lawyer in Chongqing who represented Gong Gangmo, a motorbike mogul, has told friends he was detained by the police for 30 days and regularly beaten. The lawyer was recently approached by police officers with a stack of large photographs and asked whether he could identify the policemen who had tortured him, according to the Chongqing resident with police contacts.

Mr. Gong was also represented by Li Zhuang, a Beijing lawyer who was sentenced by a Chongqing court to 18 months in prison for suborning perjury. Mr. Li’s case became a rallying point for liberal Chinese who criticized Mr. Bo for undermining the legal system. Mr. Li said in a telephone interview that he had heard about the warning to police officers who used questionable methods during “da hei,” though there was no sign yet that courts were reopening cases.

“What I can assure you is that unjust cases indeed exist without a doubt, and there are quite a few of them,” Mr. Li said. “Many victims of ‘da hei’ have approached me and want me to help them to seek justice.” Among the victims that Mr. Li has been advising are family members of Li Jun, a real estate mogul who was accused of more than a dozen crimes and was forced to flee China. Thirty-one relatives and colleagues have been jailed. Mr. Li’s wife, Luo Cong, served a one-year sentence for aiding his flight, and his elder brother, Li Xiuwu, was sentenced to 18 years in prison. His nephew is serving 13 years.

Lawyers representing Ms. Luo and Mr. Li have filed appeals in a Chongqing court, according to legal documents.

Many policemen who were not allied with Mr. Wang, the police chief, were also imprisoned during the campaign. Those treated most severely were ones with close ties to Wen Qiang, a former top justice official, who was executed in July 2010 after being convicted of serious corruption. A senior policeman who was released from prison after Mr. Bo’s purge is lobbying for redress and hopes to be reinstated in the police force, a friend of the policeman said. His family had also been detained and persecuted.

“His colleagues are paying a great deal of attention to his case,” the man said.

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting from Beijing, and Shi Da contributed research.