2026 Cook County Budget Meetings Treasurer, Clerk of the Court, & Cook County Clerk

Cook County Board of Commissioners Finance Committee Meeting
October 30, 2025

Treasurer – Maria Pappas 
Proposed 2026 Budget $18,447,000                    Proposed 2026 Positions           78
Actual 2025 Budget       $17,708,000                    Actual 2025 Approved Positions     78
     Difference                 + $  739,000                    Difference                                         0 

Treasurer Pappas presented more than 70 pages of information of what her department is doing and achieving including:

• 94% of the 2026 budget revenue will come from fees. Only 3.7% is funded by taxpayers
• In 1998 the office had 250 employees versus the 78 today and budgeted for 2026
• Black and Latino Housing Matters direct outreach assistance has become a priority 
• To date, 15 published reports on property tax related topics including:  “How wealthy investors are making millions exploiting IL property tax law” and “a broken property tax appeals system”
• The annual tax sale auction number of days has been reduced from 20 to 4 days with 241,597 properties sold since 2008
• Released a 2025 study showing that homeowners in the highest-income areas appealed assessments 46% while the lowest income (primarily blacks and Latinos) 11% 
• The website can be accessed in 248 languages and certain brochures are available in 27
• Next Study is going to address county-wide TIF’s

Treasurer Pappas raised the following concerns:

• The need to extend the tax bill auction until the U.S. Supreme Court case is decided
• She doesn’t know when the Fall 2025 tax bills will be “clean enough” to go out 
• Her total lack of confidence in the new Property Tax System under the auspices of the Tyler company and the Assessor’s failure to run parallel systems while the new system was being implemented.  She gave many examples of problems with the information provided by Tyler from the new system during testing and said she will not release inaccurate tax bills

Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County – Mariyana Spyropoulos
Prosed 2026 Budget $122,128,000    Proposed 2026 Positions                1,405
Actual 2025 Budget   $102,419,000    Actual 2025 Approved Positions     1,422
Difference                +$  19,709,000         Difference                                           (17)

Circuit Court Clerk Spyropoulos began her presentation with the office’s accomplishments since taking office after the Nov. 2024 election:

• Made strides with increasing transparency and modernizing her office by developing a public dashboard showing the cases but not the details of the cases which is available via an on-line search by case.  Also identifying weak spots and fixing them. (no details given)
• Rewrote the employee handbook including ethical standards
• Hired a new ethics officer
• Provides instant website translation in over 50 languages
• Waived fines and fees during amnesty week
• Working to ensure accurate and complete court records-ideally, by the end of the day
• 400 courtroom clerks retrained
• Brought the Clerk’s office to every corner of the county (all courtrooms)
• Working on an employee culture shift, not just a data shift

Clerk Spyropoulos met with the incoming Chief Judge to discuss her highest priorities including:

• Improving warrant technology
• Getting all Judges on board with new technology
• Developing a Strategic Plan
• Improving Courtroom Technology
• Training employees

Note:  There are 102 law enforcement agencies in Cook County that can initiate citations (tickets) and some still use paper.  By December the Clerk’s office should be able to accept all tickets in its system.
Commissioner Questions:  

• Comm.Degnan asked for a list of the clerk’s State Legislative Priorities:  Answer: Need a will depository
• Comm. Anaya:  Goal of # of clerks in courtrooms:  Ans:  Ideally, 1 per courtroom except in domestic violence and criminal courtrooms – 2 is ideal
• Comm. Vasquez: When asked about the time it takes to get paperwork to the Sheriff to release or detain an individual:  Ans:  the Sheriff needs a paper copy which is transmitted immediately via the “courtroom basket”.  However, the Sheriff’s deputy is responsible for getting the emit to the Sheriff’s office. 

Cook County Clerk – Monica Gordon
Proposed 2026 Budget:   $80,108,000       Proposed 2026 Positions                344
Actual 2025 Budget:         $73,441,000       Actual 2025 Approved Positions     349
Difference                        +$ 6,667,000                                        (5)

Clerk Gordon started by sharing priorities:

• Safeguarding elections including physical and cyber security
• Service to the public including outreach events
• Modernizing, streamlining, and more transparency
• For 2026 election: new dashboard, enhanced GIS tracking, security and logistics, campaign for early voting in light of Federal intimidation.  Can provide information by neighborhood of who hasn’t voted and who voted early.
• Provide automated smart box drop off which will go to every early vote site by November and in 6 Court Houses for the March 2026 Primary.  Note:  the new boxes will have the ability for fire suppression. 
• Expanding the piloted “appointment system” to obtain records now in Markam courthouse to other locations to save wait times and long lines
• Youth voter outreach and education - 25 Suburban high schools are being recruited to be a 1-day early voting site with student election judges.  
• Projects mail-in ballots will expand from 400,000 in the last two elections to 600,000 for November 2026. Now able to use non-profit postal rates because the Postal Service is required to send ballots priority mail.  Will save millions of dollars on postage

Regarding the new Property Tax System being spearheaded by the Tyler company:

• The office has found 47 defects with the new system of which 9 are critical, and 6 are major.  The Clerk gave 20 years of tax history to Tyler to help them with validation. The data dictionary has a lot of coding errors that affect the correct transfer of data.
• The entire staff is trained and being trained on the system
• Asked by Commission Trevor if it is possible to go into the old system – Ans:  No for Treasurer and Assessor offices.  Yes for Clerk, but would have to transfer the data.
• Comm. Vasquez said that there needs to be a clear understanding of property tax issues if communities of color are ever able to get a chance to latch onto the American Dream.

Other Commissioner Questions:

• Comm. Degnan asked for advance policy planning on how to handle Federal presence at polling sites.  While giving the answer, the Clerk’s staff said that there is a decrease from $400 M to $15 M from the current administration for federal election needs, including cyber security.
• Comm. Britton wants the pilot program currently only in Palatine that provides a portal to access vital records to be expanded.
• Comm. Scott wants to push for high schools to be more engaged and offered to help

Observer:  Diane Edmundson