As Cook County property tax bills again face long delays, officials point fingers over who’s to blame
The heads of Cook County’s assessor’s office and its property tax appeal agency currently don’t agree on how it happened, but they agree on this: Second-installment property tax bills are going to be delayed this year again.
County officials have not announced how far the postponement will stretch, but the chair of the Board of Review has warned it could be six months — the latest due date in the past 10 years. Traditionally, the offices involved have aimed to get the second round of bills out by July with an August due date.
The tardiness could impose a hardship not only on property owners but also on taxing bodies such as public school districts and other forms of local government. And it comes after second-installment bills already faced a two-month delay in 2021.
Board of Review Chair Larry Rogers Jr. contends the buck stops with Assessor Fritz Kaegi, whom Rogers said “controls the calendar” because Kaegi’s office begins the process by assessing property values before handing calculations to the Board of Review. The appeals board then conducts another look at properties whose owners want their assessments reconsidered. The clerk then applies the equalizer formula, and the treasurer issues the bills.
“It’s time for the Assessor to own his mistakes and spend less time pointing fingers and more time figuring out how to get the bills out on time, if in fact that was ever his priority,” Rogers wrote in a March 30 statement that said Kaegi’s office did not transmit data to the appeals board on time.
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Also that day, Rogers took to Twitter to declare Kaegi was “worse than Covid” for what Rogers said was Kaegi’s responsibility for the delays.
Kaegi’s office responded that it was Rogers who was at fault because the assessor’s office had been modernizing its technological framework, a plan that had been in place since 2015, but the Board of Review hasn’t cooperated.
“Commissioner Rogers should stop slow-walking this process and playing politics with the property tax system,” Kaegi’s wrote on what he called the Board of Review’s “refusal to participate” in the computer mainframe transition.
Kaegi’s office also said it began sending data to the Board of Review back in November but the appeals board dragged its feet with hearings. Meanwhile, Rogers said Kaegi’s implementation of the new technology was “disastrous.”
Kaegi is seeking re-election this year and is being challenged in the June 28 Democratic primary by Kari Steele, president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.
Kaegi announced on Twitter Monday that he has tested positive for COVID-19 the previous day, saying he’s “been vaccinated and boosted since treatments became available. My symptoms are relatively minor.”
A hearing on getting the property tax bills out is slated for the coming weeks among all the agencies involved: the assessor, Board of Review, county clerk, treasurer and Bureau of Technology. But in the meantime, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said she already told the first two offices to sort out their disagreements.
“Finger-pointing and name-calling isn’t helpful in that process, and I’ve told the actors involved that directly,” Preckwinkle told reporters last week. She cited the technological growing pains and the COVID-19 pandemic as the roots of the problem.
