Noticeably absent from the news were tales of St. Clair County corruption, but today, Sauget comes through for those of us titilated by the Metro East mess.

SAUGET — Lingerie. Home appliances. Weight loss products. Dinner parties at St. Louis steakhouses.

Those are just some of the scores of purchases Mayor Paul Sauget has charged to village taxpayers on village credit cards, according to a Belleville News-Democrat review of credit card statements.

Between December 2001 and August 2003, Sauget racked up $38,407 in expenses, according to billing statement copies obtained under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.

The statements for the village-issued American Express and Citi Platinum cards show that Sauget’s expenses have spanned a wide gamut.

They include: $57 for a People magazine subscription in December 2001; $5,010 for medical services at the Midwest Head and Neck Center in St. Louis in May 2002; $25 for mail order vitamins in October 2002; and $35 for coins from the Franklin Mint in New York, the receipts show.

Also included were scores of items bought from vendors catering to a female clientele.

They include: $117 for cosmetics from a Bloomingdales catalog in December 2001; $165 for women’s clothing from Victoria’s Secret in February 2002; $228 for women’s underwear from Dillard’s department store in Fairview Heights in October 2002; $275 for the L.A. Weight Loss Center in O’Fallon; and $45 for a trip to USA Nails in Cahokia in August 2002, the receipts show.

Sauget, 78, has served as mayor of the village — population 249 — that bears his family name for more than three decades.

If the village is known for anything, it’s for the hulking chemical plants and popular bars and strip clubs planted along Illinois 3. The internal workings of village government usually keep a low profile.

Sauget was incorporated to avoid East St. Louis incorporating the area and imposing controls on Monsanto’s chemical plants. East St. Louis is now rewarded with heavy metals in their soil killing off the old trees.

It along with Brooklyn and Washington Park are essentially dens of corruption that the rest of Illinois has treated like law free zones.