Preckwinkle, Reilly tussle over IT upgrade that delayed Cook County tax bills

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Democratic primary challenger Brendan Reilly are sparring over problems with a massive countywide technology overhaul that resulted in delayed property tax bills and payments to local governments.

Fallout over the county’s contract with Tyler Technologies was front and center during an exchange between the four-term county board president and 19-year Chicago alderman that took place before the Daily Herald Editorial Board.

Reilly, who met recently with suburban school district superintendents and librarians, said implementation of the new property tax billing system has “wreaked havoc” on local taxing bodies. They have had to take out loans with interest while waiting to receive their share of property taxes from the county, he said.

Some school districts issued tax anticipation warrants; others lost investment income or were forced to dip into reserves to provide the cash flow needed to offset late-arriving tax revenues.

“They’ve been doing their job. They’ve been good fiscal stewards. They’ve been managing local tax dollars carefully, and because Cook County failed at such a massive level, they’re now being hit with major fiscal pressures,” said Reilly, who represents Chicago’s 42nd Ward that covers much of downtown.

“This is an absolute disaster,” he added. “And what’s most frustrating is that there’s been a lack of leadership at the top of the food chain in Cook County. There’s a lot of finger pointing and casting of blame, and no one’s owning accountability for this.”

Preckwinkle said property taxes hadn’t gone out on time for more than 30 years and the county was using outdated 40-year-old technology “on the brink of collapse” when she came into office in 2010.

“We have an immensely complicated system. A million and a half properties. I knew that the system needed to be fixed. And nobody had tried to do it beforehand because it’s such a massive undertaking,” Preckwinkle said.

That’s what led to the $30 million contract with Texas-based Tyler in 2015 that was competitively bid and agreed to by six separately elected county officials, she said.

After problems arose, an outside auditor was brought in and agreed Tyler was the only firm that could do the work, she added.

“We stepped up our oversight, we brought in more technical experts, and we instituted pay for performance. And we’ve gotten to the point now where we’ve done the hard work, we’ve got the system in place,” Preckwinkle said. “The bills are at the printers right now.”

She said first installment 2025 tax bills will be mailed by March 2 and due April 1 — about a month later than usual. Collection money will be distributed to more than 2,000 local government agencies within 30 days after receipt of the funds, she said.

Reilly vowed to bring on a team of technical experts and lawyers to see if the vendor contract can be amended with stronger clawback provisions, should future deadlines or metrics be missed.

“My preference would be to try and find some way to salvage this. But if technical experts come in and tell us, ‘Hey, look, yeah, we sunk a lot of money into this thing, however, we think that this leaves taxpayers exposed to future liability and risk.’ Yeah, it would be dramatic and a horrible thing to have to start over,” he said.