Chicago City Wire

Cook County's second-installment property tax bills are being delayed past the usual deadline of Aug. 1 to at least December, but they could possibly be pushed back even to January, a Chicago Sun-Times report said.

The delay could compel taxing bodies to take out short-term loans to handle expenses that are usually paid for with property taxes, the report said. The interest on those loans will become an additional bill for taxpayers. Such a delay would also mean that the second-installment payment will be due shortly before the following year's first-installment payment, which is typically due in January.  

Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison noted that a significant delay would result in a serious negative impact.

"The special meeting of the Cook County Finance Committee which I formally requested three weeks ago was held today," Morrison said in an April 25 Facebook post. "I requested this meeting to bring in all of the elected property tax cycle stakeholders to address the real possibility of tax bills being delayed up to six months or more. If a significant delay does in fact occur, this will lead to local government taxing bodies across Cook County being forced to borrow funds to cover their pre-budgeted operating costs. This is a serious financial situation that needs to be avoided. I will continue to advocate for possible remedies with the hopes the Assessor's Office can meet its obligations in a timely manner which would then allow the Board of Review to process appeals."

The Cook County Assessor's Office has laid blame for the delay on a new data system; Ryan, a tax-services company, said in a recent release. The new system is believed to have delayed by several months the transmission of final 2021 real estate value assessment data from the Assessor's Office to the Cook County Board of Review. Second-installment property tax bills are typically sent out in June with a due date of  Aug. 1.                     

Morrison is a member of the Board of Commissioners, which is comprised of 17 Cook County commissioners and headed by Democrat Toni Preckwinkle. Morrison represents the 17th District, which is home to approximately 300,000 residents.    

Cook County has successfully met the Aug. 1 deadline each year since 2011 except for a two-month delay last year that was blamed on COVID-19, the Sun-Times report said. Some officials, including Board of Review Commissioner Larry Rogers Jr., are pointing the finger at first-term assessor Fritz Kaegi for implementing the new data system.

"This is squarely in Fritz Kaegi's lap," Rogers said in the report. "This is purely an implementation failure. He is the reason tax bills will go out late. He has failed to get his work done timely. He needs to own it."  

"These are unavoidable delays," Scott Smith, a spokesperson for Kaegi, said in the report. "The county was very aware of it."