Chris Kennedy, a Democratic candidate for governor, is calling on Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios to step down based on reports that his office has rigged the system in favor of property tax lawyers and the wealthy.
“The property tax racket run by Joe Berrios and political insiders needs to end and it needs to end today,” Kennedy said in a Dec. 7 release. “Berrios has used the property tax system that is defunding our public schools, defunding our social safety net, and defunding efforts to end gun violence as means to keep the political machine in power and enrich the entitled, politically connected few at everyone else’s expense. We will never change the status quo and restore opportunity to our state as long as political insiders like Joe Berrios remain in office.”
The Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois recently published a fourth part in its series examining the property tax system in Cook County. The first three parts of the series caused a stir when they were published in June and showed that valuations favored property owners in wealthy neighborhoods, that appeals favor the rich and prop up a cottage industry of property tax lawyers, and that broken systems in the Cook County assessor’s office resulted in years of incorrect property tax bills.
Chris Kennedy
| kennedyforillinois.com
The latest part of the series focuses on commercial property taxes, and alleges that Berrios and his office have completely failed to properly asses the value of commercial and industrial properties. The report also found that commercial property values did not change between reassessments despite a volatile real estate market and that assessments routinely favored high-value property owners over small business owners.
The Tribune and ProPublica report said the effects of these failures go far beyond owners of commercial and industrial properties that were assessed incorrectly. Funding not garnered through commercial property taxes is made up by increasing rates for residential property owners, according to the report.
“We can no longer rely on the traditional democratic process because Berrios uses his position as the Cook County Democratic Party chairman to intimidate anyone who opposes this property tax racket,” Kennedy said in his statement. “And, we cannot trust the state party to step in and fix a broken property tax system, as the state Democratic Party chairman is a property tax appeals lawyer whose personal finances are dependent on the status quo. All of this means the voters get sidelined and the machine and the status quo system back a wealthy self-funding candidate who will continue to support the racket with impunity.”
Kennedy argued that a wide swathe of reforms are held up by the current property tax system and legislative leaders who do not wish to change it. He said that the property tax system prevents serious consideration of a progressive income tax, which in turn prevents the state from putting adequate funding in place for schools and community safety.
“Keeping leaders like Joe Berrios in office puts the very future of our state and our country at risk,” Kennedy said in his statement. “We need integrity in our institutions and we need accountability from our elected politicians. We have people in the city, the county and in Springfield doing their jobs who’ve suffered no consequence for failing to live up to their responsibilities. That ends now. Joe Berrios should step down and if he won’t, the voters should remove him from office this March.”
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