Lake board incumbents say challengers' mailers misleading

Several Republican Lake County Board incumbents are outraged by election mailers from Democratic challengers in various districts blaming the county board for property tax assessment increases.

The near-identical mailers read: "Stop out of control property tax increases by forcing the county assessor to reassess based on current home values, not on the inflated housing prices of the past."

Taken at face value, the mailers are wrong, said Steve Minsky, vice president of Citizens Action Project, a nonpartisan grass roots group advocating property tax reform.

The Lake County assessor has no such authority to reassess property values since property tax assessments are made by individual township assessors, who are elected and not controlled by the county board. The Lake County Assessor, who is appointed by the board, has no authority to reassess property values but sets tax rates.

Incumbents say the mailers are misleading because they bring in a Cook County issue.

"In Cook County, the county assessor can do anything they want," said David Stolman, a Buffalo Grove Republican and four-term incumbent running for re-election in Lake County Board District 20. "In Lake County, each local assessor makes that assessment and state law requires a three-year composite of evaluations. Lake County assessor does not have any control over those assessments and neither does the county board."

Stolman's Democratic challenger, Davita Siegel, who manages a dental lab from her Buffalo Grove home, said she stands by her campaign mailers, which were produced collaboratively with other county board challengers.

"There is a very concrete solution to the property tax crisis and that is a property tax cap," Siegel said, referring to a 7 percent property tax assessment cap adopted by the Cook County Board to curb huge increases. "The bottom line is that legislation was approved by the General Assembly to provide property tax relief to homeowners."

Siegel's mailers claim the county has seen property tax assessment increases of 30 percent to 50 percent.

She added the current Lake County Board had the opportunity to vote to cap the property tax assessments and chose to do nothing.

Stolman defended the board's decision saying property tax assessment increases have been less than 7 percent on average in the county.

"Why should Lake County have imposed a tax cap when there was no need for it," he said. "I am actually incensed when she is implying that property tax has increased 30 percent to 50 percent and it's all the county board's fault. There's people whose bills have gone down rather than up."

Minsky doesn't agree and says property tax assessments have gone up dramatically in pockets of Lake County and the 7 percent cap would have kept them down.

"This has been happening for decades as far as overinflating assessments and really the unfairness of certain areas and certain townships," he said. "The county board has no power except (to) reappoint the chief county assessor ... and they can remove (property tax) appeal board members. Otherwise they can't do anything."