The judge said it was a case in which corrupt public officials met with sleazy contractors for barroom payoffs with envelopes stuffed with cash.

"It sounded more like New York's Tammany Hall in the 1800s than Sacramento in 2012," Sacramento Superior Court Judge Allen H. Sumner said from the bench Friday.

Then, one by one, Sumner meted out prison sentences to three defendants convicted in one of the biggest public corruption scandals in the Sacramento area that prosecutors can remember.

Dennis Nilsson and James Mayle worked for the Sacramento Library Authority, a conduit they used – through Mayle's wife, Janie Rankins-Mayle – to loot taxpayers out of a total of more than $800,000 in an overbilling scheme that ran for more than seven years.

"It is certainly one of the largest, if not the largest, (corruption cases) in recent memory," Deputy District Attorney Mike Blazina of the office's special investigations unit said of the scheme.

Before sentencing the defendants, the judge reserved a few remarks for the administration of the library authority under its previous director, Anne Marie Gold.

"Had the library management in 2007 done its job – carefully overseeing the expenditure of public funds as if they were spending their own money – we wouldn't be here today," Sumner said.

Nilsson, 65, the library's maintenance superintendent, cooked up the kickback idea in 2000, working deals with private contractors to pad maintenance bills, evidence at trial showed.

Tall and gray-haired, Nilsson – jailed since his Dec. 9 conviction and coming off a heart attack suffered last May – came in for the heaviest sentence and the harshest words delivered by the judge.

"You were prostituting your position as the library's superintendent of facilities for your own personal benefit," Sumner told him.

With management asleep, "the only thing that stood between you and the taxpayers' money was your own conscience," the judge said.

Sumner sentenced Nilsson to 14 years and eight months in prison for his conviction on 18 felony counts that include grand theft, bribery and conflict of interest, and for special allegations of carrying out an aggravated white collar crime that embezzled more than $150,000 in public funds. Bailiffs led Nilsson out of the courtroom in handcuffs.

Next up at the defense table was Mayle, 66, the library's former security chief, who resigned in 2007 when a Sacramento Bee reporter exposed the kickback scheme through an investigative report.

As security chief, Mayle identified maintenance work needed to enhance the safety of the library's operation. The District Attorney's Office alleged he fell in with Nilsson in 2004. For the next three years, Mayle – the former police chief of the old Grant Joint Union High School District – requisitioned security upgrades and parceled them out in conjunction with Nilsson through two billing companies run by Mayle's wife.

Sumner did not lambaste Mayle in the same fashion he did Nilsson. Citing Mayle's age and lack of prior criminal record, he gave him the lightest sentence of the three defendants: five years and four months for his grand theft, bribery and conflict of interest convictions and the jury's special findings.

While the judge held back on Mayle, the deputy DA did not. Blazina called him the "gatekeeper" of the scheme and argued against Mayle's low-term sentence.

"The defendant lied repeatedly throughout this case," Blazina said, to library and DA investigators and in his trial testimony.

Blazina hammered Mayle for chastising employees at the Valley Hi branch during a 2004 petty theft investigation, at the same time he was on the cusp of taking part in the scheme that padded 1,400 invoices by an estimated $780,000.

Mayle tried to apologize, telling the court, "I stand before you fully exposed before the community, my family and friends," until he broke down in tears. On his way out of court, he asked the judge, "May I hug and kiss my wife?"

Sumner denied the request.

Rankins-Mayle, 63, a former captain for the Sacramento Port Authority police, joined her husband in the handcuffed walk of ignominy out of the courtroom. She received a six-year term as a result of her grand theft and bribery convictions.

Rankins-Mayle set up two billing companies that processed the overstuffed work orders. She didn't make a statement to the court. She told a probation officer in her pre-sentencing report she was "disappointed" with the verdict against her, although "I accept full responsibility."

Along with the jail time, Sumner fined Nilsson $500,000 and the Mayles $100,000 each. Blazina asked for more, but the judge said he didn't want the fine to impede the defendants' ability to pay restitution. He scheduled a restitution hearing for March 2. Blazina said he will ask that a receiver be appointed to investigate the defendants' assets.

Library Authority board member Jeff Slowey, who is the mayor of Citrus Heights, and new library director Rivkah Sass attended the hearing. Both asked the judge to go as heavy on the defendants as possible. They said the money stolen from the library could have paid for 40,000 new children's picture books or two years of operations for a new library branch in the Pocket-Greenhaven area.

Outside court, Sass said Friday's sentencings put the scandal behind the agency and allowed "the library staff to move forward."

"We're working real hard to rebuild that public trust and to focus on what our primary business is – being a community center and inspiring a literate community," Sass said.

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