Property Taxes Increased Three Times The Cost Of Living While Residents Sat On The Voting Sidelines, According To New Report

From The Center Square:

By Bob Chiarito

Property taxes in Cook County have increased 99 percent, while the cost of living went up by just 36 percent over the last 20 years, according to a report recently released by Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas.

Pappas, who has been treasurer for two decades said she commissioned the report to address questions she gets on a daily basis.

“I’ve been the treasurer for 20 years so I am the individual that everybody comes to talk about their taxes, even though they know it’s not me raising them,” she said.

In Chicago, where Mayor Lori Lightfoot just proposed another property tax increase, taxes over the last 20 years have increased even more, to 115 percent.

Pappas said residents can stop some increases by getting involved. She cited record low voter turn out, around 27%, over the past 20 years as one of the reasons why lawmakers don’t feel the pressure to keep costs down. Additionally, Pappas said for her, the most shocking discovery was the small number of voters who often decide the fate of bond deals.

“If you go to the home rule and non-home rule section, where these $45 million bond deals keep passing because 2,500 people vote for them in the suburbs but there’s actually 30,000 people in the suburbs and nobody registers to vote, much less – less than half of them vote,” Pappas said. “So all these deals are passing because 75 percent of the people in the city and 75 percent of the people in the suburbs on average don’t register and/or vote.”

Pappas said her report, put together during the pandemic, also includes information that she has not released yet.

“There’s a whole second and third part to it that I didn’t release, there’s another 200 pages. But it was just too much," she said. "So, I’ll get the rest out there but let’s let this sink in first cause it’s a lot.”

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