The truth about COVID assessments
The following are responses to recent reporting in the Sun-Times about the Assessor’s Office’s COVID-related assessment changes.
STATEMENT FROM ASSESSOR FRITZ KAEGI ON ASSESSOR’S OFFICE COVID ADJUSTMENTS
In March 2020, Cook County property values were headed for historic declines. We knew we had to take bold action, amid a growing global emergency, to provide accurate assessments for homeowners and commercial property owners that reflected a brewing crisis in the local real estate market.
Using financial markets and neighborhood unemployment as benchmarks, we created a data-driven, systematic way to measure estimated declines in housing values. Real-time market data was used to measure the effects on commercial property. That process was transparent and fair, and anyone can read about how we made these determinations at cookcountyassessor.com/covid19.
The result? We provided Cook County homeowners and commercial property owners with urgently needed COVID-related changes across the board. It was the right thing to do morally in that emergency, and it was the right thing to do to create more accurate property values.
It is no coincidence that those griping about COVID relief are property tax attorneys and large commercial property owners who benefited from the rigged system of the past.
2020 was a year of imperfect choices without easy solutions. Property owners were isolated at home and dealing with financial and mental health challenges. Had we done nothing to react to these extraordinary circumstances, only those who appealed their assessments would have seen the economic effects of COVID reflected in their property values. This outcome would have created an inequitable result, shifting the property tax burden onto those with the least access during a life-threatening pandemic. It’s our job to ensure equity throughout the entire assessment system, not just for people who appeal.
STATEMENT FROM ASSESSOR’S OFFICE SPOKESPERSON ON ERRORS IN THE SUN-TIMES ARTICLE
The Sun-Times’ claims about the Assessor’s Office’s COVID adjustments are incorrect.
Our office has operated transparently, publishing an extensive, public explanation of our COVID adjustments on the Assessor’s Office’s website in May 2020, when we originally made the COVID relief adjustments. Anyone who is interested in reviewing this information can visit https://www.cookcountyassessor.com/covid19.
The Sun-Times’ claim that our office did not provide information on each property’s reduction is false. All of the information explaining the reductions is publicly available online.
We also provided the Sun-Times with extensive spreadsheets showing reductions for each property in advance of the publication of their article.
We have made transparency and accountability a hallmark of this administration, and information around our COVID relief efforts is no exception. All property value changes are reflected on the Assessor’s Office’s website, the Cook County Property Tax Portal (cookcountypropertyinfo.com) and the Cook County Open Data Portal. All the code and models used in this work are publicly available.
Contrary to the Sun-Times’ claims, any residential property owner can review a map that shows what their neighborhood’s adjustment was, which was reflected in their individual assessment.
The Sun-Times claims that only “a few” commercial properties received reductions for COVID. This is demonstrably false. Thousands of commercial properties throughout Cook County received COVID adjustments.
Opponents of our efforts to make the Assessor’s Office more fair and accurate want people to think that this work was done incorrectly. They want you to believe that because we didn’t lower tax bills based on the income of property owners or their neighborhoods that the changes were inaccurate. This is flat-out false. Here’s the truth: property tax bills aren’t calculated based on individual homeowners’ income. They’re affected by assessments and local tax rates. Our COVID response made the assessments more accurate. But our office doesn’t control local tax rates. The Sun-Times’ reporting failed to mention this.
In multiple hours of interviews with the three Sun-Times reporters, numerous conversations over email, and with the delivery of many pages of Freedom of Information Act responses, our office explained how these COVID changes were implemented and what the results were. The reporters, inexplicably, chose not to include most of this information in their article.
Rather than explain how more than 1.5 million residential and commercial properties received a needed COVID adjustment during a life-threatening pandemic, the Sun-Times chose to focus on the adjustments made to a handful of prominent Chicagoans and multi-million dollar commercial properties. Despite heavy implications by the writers, nothing in the article shows they were inappropriately treated differently than anyone else, or that our office didn’t use a fair, data-driven approach. The truth is, we issued COVID adjustments fairly, transparently, and by treating everyone equitably. We don’t give special treatment to the politically connected or very wealthy–and we never will.
The Sun-Times also misrepresents the effects of the assessment schedule. North suburban reassessments are calculated every three years as are Chicago and South/West suburban reassessments. In 2021, Chicagoans benefited from a full reassessment, just as suburban homeowners did in the previous two years.
We made sure that all Chicago properties were valued fairly in 2021–which resulted in Chicago homeowners being treated more equitably, with even more up-to-date assessments than the year before. For the average Chicago homeowner, that could mean a lower share of the property tax burden than in the 2020 tax year.
Perhaps most concerning, the Sun-Times fails to mention that residential and commercial property values hit historic lows in March 2020. This was the crisis the Assessor’s Office took urgent action to address. That decision to ignore the context of the unfurling COVID emergency, and our efforts to provide more accuracy for taxpayers, does a disservice to the Sun-Times readership.
