Houlihan won't seek reelection as Cook Co. assessor

James Houlihan, Cook County assessor for the past 12 years, announced Thursday he will not run for re-election next year.

Houlihan, 66, who was appointed to the position in 1997 and re-elected three times, took what had previously been a shadowy government bureaucracy and used it to advance an activist agenda of property-tax reform while pushing for changes in education funding.

"I think he's done a great job," said Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin. "I think he saw that he had a bully pulpit that allowed him to talk about the inequity in eduction funding, talk about the inequity of using property taxes as the basis for essential government services, and I think he did that well."

Houlihan's immediate legacy is that he used tax policy to advance progressive politics. And in giving Cook County homeowners reforms such as the 7 Percent Expanded Homeowner Exemption, which limited annual increases in the taxable property value to 7 percent, he forced other politicians to confront difficult positions in state funding and revenue.

"With the conclusion of the city reassessment this year, I will have accomplished almost the entire agenda we set out with," Houlihan said at a news conference Thursday outside his offices at the Cook County Building in Chicago. "I think when you complete an agenda, it's a good idea to reshuffle the deck."

Houlihan served six years in the Illinois House of Representatives out of Chicago's North Shore in the mid-70s, then worked in Mayor Harold Washington's administration in the '80s. He made no mention of running for higher office and instead said he was looking into teaching, the private sector and the "foundation world."

In addition to the Expanded Homeowner Exemption, Houlihan also developed programs benefiting longtime occupants, disabled persons, disabled veterans and returning veterans, as well as so-called mom-and-pop businesses. He streamlined the appeal process and made it more accessible, efficient and transparent online. Along the way, he saw the assessor's staff trimmed from 474 to 386 persons.

Yet Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan organization monitoring government efficiency, while praising Houlihan's emphasis on technology and transparency, said he could have done more.

"He is someone who has advocated for property-tax reform, but has not been successful in tackling that very complicated subject," Msall said. "I think Jim Houlihan deserves credit for advocating for comprehensive reform, for looking for creative solutions, but in the final judgment, he was not able to get his prescribed solution adopted by the General Assembly."

Houlihan seemed to be aware of that and remained determined Thursday to address it. He labeled as "disappointments" the phasing out of the 7 percent exemption and the failure to shift local-government funding away from property taxes.

In April, Houlihan backed Gov. Patrick Quinn's call to increase the state income tax as a way to provide "long-overdue property-tax relief for homeowners." Yet, as he put it, "unfortunately, the gridlock and paralysis in Springfield left no room for reform."

"That makes it all the more important for me to focus for the next 16 months on those efforts," he added. "I will dedicate myself to these two issues with renewed vigor."

Even as a lame duck, Houlihan has tools to affect policy. He is currently overseeing a countywide reassessment that could drop rates to match declining property values.

"There has been turbulence in the real-estate market," he said, "and we are here to reflect fairly, uniformly and precisely that market value."

That could dramatically cut government revenues.

"This will put pressure on all the taxing bodies," Suffredin acknowledged.

The Civic Federation released a report Thursday stating that Cook County real-estate values fell in 2007, the most recent full year available, for the first time since at least 1995. Overall property value dropped almost $10 billion to $656.5 billion, down 1.5 percent overall, 2.8 percent in Chicago and 1 percent in the Northwest suburbs.

Yet that wouldn't translate to lower taxes, Msall insisted.

"Merely lowering the assessment of individual properties to reflect the loss of value will not necessarily reduce the property-tax burden," he said.

Houlihan offered one last bit of implicit advice to whoever succeeds him. "My mother told me, when I first went into public office," he said, "the more people know about what you do, the more likely you'll do the right thing."