Accountability
Forest Preserves
Public Safety
Cook County Budget
Forest Pres. Budget
Property Tax Appeal
Health & Hospitals
Policy Resolutions

SPRINGFIELD — State lawmakers rejected Wednesday extending a law first passed to provide relief to Cook County homeowners whose skyrocketing property values resulted in massive tax bills.
Chicago and Cook County lawmakers wanted another three years of the law that limits to 7 percent how much the assessed value of a home can increase each year. It’s that value that’s used to determine property tax bills. The maximum assessment discount would have been capped at $20,000.
Supporters said it was vital to keeping families in their neighborhoods, citing instances of modest families in modest homes being hit with enormous tax bills as the property under their homes becomes immensely valuable. Selling and moving, those lawmakers said, is not an option.
“Where are they going to go? The people in my community want to stay in the community,” said state Rep. Harry Osterman, a Chicago Democrat.
Several suburban Cook County lawmakers, such as Republicans Carolyn Krause of Mount Prospect and Sidney Mathias of Buffalo Grove, also called for the law’s renewal.
“We can’t allow the people who have benefited to suffer in the future,” said Mathias.
But lawmakers from other suburban counties and downstate opposed the idea, and without their votes — combined with some pockets of opposition primarily in Cook’s south suburbs — the plan came up well short of the 71 votes needed in order to take effect immediately when the current law expires at the end of this year.
Downstate representatives said the result of such artificial limits on Cook County home values is that Cook County schools end up qualifying for more state funding, reducing the pool of money available to everyone else.
“Someone always pays,” said state Rep. Frank Mautino, a Spring Valley Democrat.
And some South suburban Democrats argued an effect of the assessment caps was that Cook County residents with less valuable homes ended up subsidizing tax relief for people with expensive homes.
Supporters invoked a procedural maneuver to wipe out the official vote and preserve the opportunity to bring the plan back for a second try.