Assessor and Board of Review State that Tax Bills May be Late if Cuts Made to their Budgets

Cook County Board of Commissioners Finance Committee - Departmental Budget Hearings
October 27, 2017 

Assessor
Board of Review
Board of Commissioners 

Commissioners absent for all or most of the meetings:  Butler, Goslin, Moody (arrived 12:15), Moore.  Fritchey was not in the room, but sent a message he was watching from home as he had a doctor’s appointment about a hip replacement.
Commissioners present:  Arroyo, Boykin, Daley, Deer, Gainer, Garcia, Morrison, Silvestri, Sims, Suffredin, Tobolski

Items of Interest:

• President Preckwinkle appointed the Civic Consulting Alliance this summer to review the assessment process after Chicago Tribune articles alleging a deeply flawed process which led to significant disparities that particularly hurt those in less affluent areas.  More faulty assessments lead to more appeals.
• Assessor Berrios said he had no idea when the review of the process would be completed.  When asked if this would be prior to the March primary, he said that he could not tell the Alliance when it should complete the review.  Apparently, he did not ask about the timetable in order to be prepared to answer the questions about the review. He did say he was fully cooperating with the review.  
• The League had sent Commissioners a list of information to be obtained from the Assessor and Board of Review, including number of appeals, number of appeals granted, reasons for successful appeals, and what steps are being taken to correct reasons for incorrect assessments.  Chairman Daley said that he has asked the Assessor and Board of Review to provide this information, which should be posted on the County web site.  The League will watch to see what is posted and when.
• Assessor Joseph Berrios provided a response to reach the requested 10% cut to the proposed budget to help fill the $200 million hole resulting from the repeal of the sweetened beverage tax.  The proposed cuts included eliminating 42 positions that are currently vacant.  However, the Budget Director said that the projected savings would be less than half because the turnover adjustment (a reduction in the proposed budget to account for the fact that the positions would not be filled for the full budget year) would not be as great.  The Assessor said that he would go back and propose further cuts to reach the 10%.  The Board of Review (Commissioners Michael Cabornargi, Dan Patlak, and Larry Rogers, Jr.) did not provide any information as to where cuts could be made.
• Both the Assessor and the Board of Review stated that making any cuts to their budgets would likely result in the 2nd installment property tax bills going out late.  The estimated costs to all the local taxing bodies in Cook County is $5 to $6 million in interest for each month tax payments are delayed as a result of late bills since many of these taxing bodies would have to take out loans to keep functioning while they wait for the tax revenues.  This did occur during the many years the tax bills were delayed until 6 years ago when all the elected officials involved with the tax bills came together and worked out a better process, aided by technology.  The concern is particularly great for 2018 because that is the year all the properties within the City of Chicago are reassessed (approximately 882,000) and the expectation is that there will be far more appeals.
• The number of appeals continues to grow.  Many of the Commissioners expressed gratitude for all the outreach to the public both entities do, but this outreach undoubtedly leads to more appeals.
• During the meeting on the Commissioners’ own budgets, Commissioner Suffredin said that they need to treat themselves as they treat other departments with regard to cuts.

​Observer -  Priscilla Mims