Anonymous board of review gets attention

The Cook County Board of what?

Review.

What is that?

It's the board that decides if your property tax assessment is correct.

Do the candidates have your attention now?

Apparently, they do.

The normally anonymous race for the three-member board or review is getting lots of attention and money this time around, in part because the two candidates for the office are somewhat of an extension of different political organizations.

Challenger Jay Paul Deratany is backed by Cook County Assessor Jim Houlihan, somewhat of a maverick Democrat.

Incumbent Joe Berrios, on the other hand, is the epitome of a party man, serving also as the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party.

Berrios, like many Democratic committeemen, voted to put Todd Stroger on the ballot for county president, a fact Deratany makes hay of in his new commercial.

Deratany, said Berrios, is simply a tool of Houlihan, whose assessment rulings are reviewed by the Board of Review. Houlihan already managed last election to get his candidate on the board last time around, Berrios backers said, and putting another on would effectively turn control of the board over to Houlihan.

Deratany said part of the reason Houlihan's backing him so strongly is that he and Deratany feel the board of review has given more favorable reductions in assessments to businesses than homeowners -- effectively shifting the bulk of the tax burden to homeowners from businesses.

"He gives huge, multinational corporations multimillion-dollar tax breaks," said Deratany.

Berrios said businesses breaks are large because their bills, to start with, are so much larger than the average homeowner's. But percentage-wise, he says, they're comparable.

In fact, said Berrios, homeowners who represent themselves get a reduction 65 percent of the time when they appeal to his board.

Be that as it may, said Deratany, the real estate lawyers are backing Berrios, fearing their breaks will go if Berrios goes.

In fact, Berrios started this year with a whopping $1.2 million in just one of his several campaign funds, much of it from attorneys who appear before him.

Berrios said he's not happy with the way fundraising works. But the alternative, he said, is that only candidates like Deratany, a personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer who contributed $100,000 to his own fund, would be able to run.

What Deratany is saying, Berrios said, "is anyone who is a minority (or poor) and can't afford to run should sit down."

Deratany has raised respectable amounts of cash himself, pulling in a total of about $600,000 for his race.

Although he has supplied $100,000 of his money himself, much of Deratany's money comes from Houlihan and other elected officials like Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley.