Claypool, Berrios clash over new assessment system

Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool is taking issue with how the board of review is handling the transition to the so-called 10-25 assessment system.

"It's designed to create simplicity," Claypool said, but he doesn't believe it's being managed that way.

The board of review, which handles assessment appeals, claims it's actions are shifting the tax burden to homeowners, something Claypool steadfastly denies.

The new 10-25 property tax assessment ordinance was passed overwhelmingly by the county board in September 2008 to go into effect this year. It took a complex property-tax system with several different residential and commercial strata, ranging from a homeowner's assessment based on 16 percent of market value to the highest commercial assessment based on 38 percent of market value, and replaced it with a streamlined, two-part system: residential properties assessed at 10 percent and business properties at 25 percent of market value.

Claypool said that 2.5-to-1 ratio is the maximum difference allowed by state statute. "It's consistent with what the constitution allows," he said.

Yet the board of review, led by Commissioner Joseph Berrios, who also is chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party, maintains the new system is actually shifting the tax burden to homeowners.

Complicating matters - as if tax law weren't complicated enough - is that Chicago Democrats Berrios and Claypool are opponents in the county assessor's race in the fall general election to replace retiring incumbent James Houlihan. Berrios won the Democratic primary in February. Claypool, after announcing he would not seek re-election as a commissioner, declared himself an independent assessor candidate this year.

The two are bitter political rivals, and Claypool is aligned with Houlihan, having sponsored the assessor's original 10-25 proposal.

"Homeowners are being ill-affected by the 10-25," Berrios said. He pointed to how business assessments were being cut 13 percentage points, from 38 to 25 percent of market value, while homeowners are being cut but 6 percentage points, from 16 to 10. "That's a huge amount of reduction for the business community," he said.

Yet statistics are funny things, and simple math shows that while businesses are having their assessments cut by just over one-third, from 38 to 25, homeowners are benefiting by a nearly 38 percent reduction, from 16 to 10.

"What they're saying doesn't make any sense," Claypool said. "He's trying to manufacture an issue to distract attention from the fact that he is getting ready to do what he's done every year, which is shift hundreds of millions of dollars of the tax burden away from corporate and commercial interests represented by clout-heavy attorneys and shift that burden onto the backs of homeowners."

Claypool and Houlihan, among others, have charged that Berrios has benefited from the complexity of the system, as well as from campaign donations from lawyers arguing appeals, in addition to firms owned by Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, chairman of the state Democratic Party, and Senate President John Cullerton, whom Berrios in turn has lobbied on behalf of clients in the General Assembly.

Berrios countered that the 10-25 was ill-thought-out, and the success businesses are having appealing assessments was an unintended consequence of the ordinance. "The board of review has taken the position that they never were able to finish a study to see what the problems would be with it," he said.

Like his fellow board of review Commissioner Larry Rogers Jr., Berrios cited properties where the assessment might decline, but the assessed market value was actually going up, a detail left off assessment notices.

"How can any sane person believe market values have gone up in Cook County?" he said.

Claypool replied with the dirty little secret that assessed market values have never really reflected true market values - something the 10-25 ordinance was meant to address.

"All it was designed to do was reflect the actual reality of the marketplace," Claypool said. "Everyone knows that for decades the assessments have not reflected the actual statutory levels (of real-estate values). So this was simply designed to create transparency and bring the legal ratios into line with the actual reality of assessments over the decades."

That has made for an uneasy transition, no matter how streamlined and simple the new system might be. Rogers has argued the board of review has to consider previous assessed market values - erroneous though they might be - in ruling on appeals, a stance that threatens to undo the 10-25's intended reforms.

Berrios backed off that, saying, "We're trying to get it at what the accurate market value is, putting it at the 10-25," but he acknowledged that is a work in progress.