Entries associated with the tag "Cook County Board Of Review":

Yesterday Mayor Daley held a press conference to announce that help was on the way for the city's poor beleaguered residential property tax payers.

He was going to have the Cook County Board of Review extend the deadline for filing tax assessment appeals. You now have until March 31 to appeal.

Pardon me for being unappreciative, but: thanks for nothing, Mr. Mayor.

I know these things get complicated, so I'll be brief. The most important element in determining how much we pay in property taxes is the levy -- that is, the amount of property tax dollars Mayor Daley wants to spend. Our levy keeps rising because Daley keeps spending more and more money every year thanks to TIFs, the mayor's favorite tax boondoggle.

The mayor either doesn't realize this or doesn't want to admit it. So when the public cries for tax relief, he proposes to tinker with the assessment -- the one part of the taxpaying process he should have nothing to do with. As faithful readers ought to know by now, your property tax bill is basically determined by multiplying the amount your property is valued at (i.e., its assessment)  by the tax rate. If the board of review lowers your assessment, will you pay less in taxes? Absolutely. But the overall amount of property taxes that Mayor Daley's government -- and, let's face it, he controls all aspects of local government -- will remain the same. So the burden of payment will shift from those who know how to play the tax-appeals game to those who don't.

Who generally applies for assessment cuts? Commercial property owners who have the savvy to hire sharp, clout-heavy lawyers who know enough to contribute campaign dollars to the three members of the board of review.

So the mayor's great reform proposal means that the sharpies will get a break and everyone else -- the usual collection of suckers and saps -- will pick up the slack. In the name of cutting our taxes, the mayor will be raising them. And all so he can win some headlines in his ongoing PR campaign to convince the public that he truly cares about taxing them out of their homes.

Please, Mr. Mayor -- no more property tax relief. The taxpayers can't afford it. 

You gotta love the Sun-Times -- God help us all if it goes out of business.

On page seven of today's edition the shameless matter-of-fact corruption of everyday life in Chicago is clearly laid out for anyone to see.

On the right side of the page is a small article by Tim Novak about the $29,000-a-year property tax break that Board of Review commissioners Joe Berrios, Brendhan Houlihan and Larry Rogers gave to Michael Tadin. If you recall, Tadin's the City Hall insider whose trucking company picked up several million dollars in contracts from the notorious Hired Truck program. (By the way, so much for Berrios being the only impediment to reform on that three-person board.)  By lowering the assessment on Tadin's Gold Coast mansion, Berrios, Houhlihan and Rogers gave him about $90,000 in property tax savings until the next reassessment in 2009, which the rest of us suckers have to absorb. Thanks, fellas.

To the left of the Tadin story is an update by Novak on the Park Grill (PDF)--aka the "clout cafe"--which is run by Matthew O'Malley, who fathered a child by Laura Foxgrover, the Park District concessions czarina who helped give him the rights to run the only restaurant in Millennium Park. (Personally, it's my favorite scandal of the Daley years). Bottom line on the update: the restaurant's bringing in about $12 million a year and still not paying any property taxes, thanks to the sweetheart deal it got from the Park District.

Finally, on the bottom of the page is a list put together by Chris Fusco of who in Tony Rezko's empire of pals, aides, and relatives gave what to Barack Obama's senate campaign.

But don't worry, people. What do Daley's lackies and flaks always tell us? Oh, yes -- it's worse in Detroit. 

The race for commissioner of the Cook County Board of Review is getting a little ridiculous, as each day seems to bring a new flyer from the candidates raising issues that bear no relevance to the office.

Over the weekend, for instance, I got a mailing from incumbent commissioner Joseph Berrios telling me that Berrios favors "clean air and water" and "better schools."

That came on the heels of a mailing from Berrios calling for a property tax freeze.

His challenger Jay Paul Deratany is a little better -- at least his flyers tell you what the office does. But one of his mailings features separate pictures of Berrios and Cook County Board president Todd Stroger with the headline "The guy behind the guy behind your high property tax bill." It's as if Berrios, as opposed to, oh, Mayor Daley, was most responsible for ushering Todd Stroger in.

I suppose it's nice that Berrios likes clean air and schools and that Deratany doesn't appreciate Stroger. But these issues have nothing to do with the board of review. The board is a three-person body that hears appeals from county property taxpayers regarding their assessments. The higher the assessment, the higher their property taxes. If the board lowers the assessment, the taxpayer pays less, but somebody else pays more to compensate.

It's a crummy system that favors people who know how to use it at the expense of everyone else, which is why Berrios would rather talk about schools and the environment. As for Deratany, the real issue is not whether Berrios is too close to Stroger, who's not a tax appeal lawyer, but whether he's too chummy with house speaker Michael Madigan, alderman Ed Burke, and other property tax lawyers who regularly bring cases before the board. Deratany doesn't put Burke and Madigan on his mailing in part because he doesn't want to pick fights with the real powers that be and in part because most voters have absolutely no idea what the board does or how the Burkes and Madigans shape its decisions.

As strategists from different campaigns have been telling me for weeks, you have to keep things simple because people are simpletons.

Cook County Democratic Party chairman Joe Berrios is in a tough battle for reelection to the county Board of Review, which hears property tax appeals. Here's how an ally explained why he deserves to keep his $100,000 post: "Joe really works at that job. He's in at 9 and stays till 5."

Thomas Jaconetty is a man who wears two hats. He's an election-law attorney, routinely called upon by Democratic incumbents to use his mastery of the election code to defend them agianst nominating-petition challenges or knock independents off the ballot. And since 1989 he's also been deputy chief commissioner of the Cook County Board of Review, the three-person body that oversees property tax appeals.

His election-law business remains steady, as evidenced by his presence at the County Building on Monday, December 11, where he accompanied one of his chief clients, 45th Ward alderman Patrick Levar, as he filed his nominating petitions for February's election. But his position at the board took a blow earlier in the month, when he was dumped as deputy chief commissioner. Greg Hinz at Crain's Chicago Business reports that Jaconetty was the victim of a power struggle that had newly elected commissioner Brendhan Houlihan (no relation to Cook County assessor James Houlihan) teaming up with incumbent commissioner Larry Rogers Jr. against commissioner Joseph Berrios to replace Berrios's pal Jaconetty with Rogers's chief of staff, Scott Guetzow.

Apparently Jaconetty landed on his feet. While watching Levar file his petitions, he told me that he was now on Berrios's staff and had no grudges against Rogers, Guetzow, or Houlihan. As long as Berrios is at the board, Jaconetty will be too. Their alliance goes back to the 70s, when they were young precinct captains in alderman Thomas Keane's legendary 31st Ward Democratic organization.

For property tax payers it's a tempest in a teapot. No matter who's in charge, our property tax system remains an unfair, seemingly arbitrary mass of contradictions. The well connected get big breaks; the rest of us suckers don't. Under the new regime, look for the Board of Review to continue doling out small breaks to the little guys smart enough to hire the right lawyers. As the commissioners see it, if they give enough little breaks to enough little people, we'll remember them with fondness come election time.