Prosecutors and defense attorneys agree that Sacramento Public Library's former security chief and his wife made hundreds of thousands of dollars billing the library for maintenance work performed by others.

The key question for jurors: Was the profit illegally obtained?

Several years after details first surfaced about the alleged corruption at the library, the trial against three defendants finally started Monday.

In opening statements, prosecutor Mike Blazina said the security director, James Mayle, and his wife, Janie Rankins-Mayle, were involved in an elaborate fraud that included kickbacks to the library's maintenance director.

But defense attorneys maintained that the husband and wife were performing a legitimate business service for the library, managing its contracts for handyman work. The library is operated by a joint authority, with most of its funding coming from the county and city of Sacramento.

Mayle, Rankins-Mayle and the former maintenance director, Dennis Nilsson, face charges of grand theft and bribery. Mayle also faces a conflict-of-interest charge for working at the library and as a library contractor.

Jurors can expect to receive extensive testimony on billing and other financial records during a trial that's expected to last five weeks.

Blazina gave a preview of the testimony Monday, showing jurors copies of checks signed by Rankins-Mayle and made out to Nilsson. The checks totaled almost $90,000, and came on top of thousands of dollars in cash payments to Nilsson, Blazina said.

They were kickbacks to Nilsson for getting the library to approve the contracting scheme, Blazina said.

Further proof of that can be found in the memos Rankins-Mayle wrote in each check to him: She noted the check number she had received from the library system prior to the payment to Nilsson, Blazina said.

Rankins-Mayle's attorney, Robert J. Saria, doesn't dispute that the memos reflect past payments from the library. But he said she noted them simply because she wanted to document to herself that the library payments had provided income to pay Nilsson for other work.

The payments to Nilsson weren't kickbacks, he said. They were payments for work his contracting company did on the home of Mayle and Rankins-Mayle, Saria said.

Saria didn't dispute how much the husband and wife's companies made in the process. Their companies took invoices from contractors which did maintenance at library facilities and then billed the system for the work.

In a four-year period, contractors provided about $560,000 in bills for work at libraries, according to Monday's testimony. Rankins-Mayle billed the library for $1.34 million, leaving a gross profit of $780,000.

"This case is about greed," Blazina said.

But Saria took a different view, noting that the library endorsed the process when it awarded a contract to Rankins-Mayle to handle the contracts through a competitive bidding process.

"This is a legitimate business model," he said.

The trial will continue this morning with opening remarks in the case against Nilsson. A separate jury is considering his charges.

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