Cook County senior's property tax refund is held up, and he's far from alone
A Cook County senior is upset because his property tax refund is delayed, and it turns out what he thought was a small problem is actually a big mess affecting 25,000 taxpayers.
A few years ago, Tom Kuznar admits he made a mistake when stopped paying taxes on his property in Mount Prospect. He ended up with a bill for $31,725 in back taxes, interest, and penalties.
Kuznar learned he had to make good on the bill, because a tax sale buyer was waiting in the wings.
"I was not going to lose, you know, a $350,000 house for 30 grand," said Kuznar.
So Kuznar borrowed money from friends, maxed out credit cards, and sold a few things. The bill was paid on Dec. 19, 2024, and the house remained his.
But Kuznar's tax troubles were not over. The 71-year-old realized Cook County actually owed him about $3,600 because of missed senior exemptions in 2022 and 2023.
"Because it was two years, I'm going to get four different checks — two for interest for each year, and two for principal," he said.
The two interest refunds, worth $70, came in March. But the checks for principal, worth thousands of dollars, never materialized.
"How come you were able to issue me the interest checks and not the principal checks?" Kuznar said. "I asked if the delay has anything to do with maybe, is there a problem in the paperwork? [They said]: 'No, no, no, no! Everything's fine! It's just we have some issues.'"
"Some issues" turned out to be part of a yearslong headache for the Cook County Treasurer's office, which has been working alongside a company named Tyler Technologies. CBS News Chicago is told the most recent problem involved a data transfer that was supposed to take Tyler Technologies less than a month.
Instead, $56 million in property tax refunds have been held up since May. County Treasurer Maria Pappas expressed her frustration with the situation:
"Mr. Kuznar's story is not unique and that's immensely frustrating to me. He's among 25,000 taxpayers and 2,200 taxing agencies owed hundreds of millions of dollars that we can't pay due to the ineptitude of Tyler Technologies.
"I've been sounding the alarm about this Texas company since 2018. During that time, I've called for Tyler to be fired and sued for failing to deliver on its promises.
"I've always prided myself on serving Cook County residents in an efficient and timely manner. So, it's pains me to find that efficiency crippled by the inability of an outside company to deliver a usable product to county taxpayers."
Pappas said Tyler Technologies was supposed to fix up the $29 million contract from 2015 within four and a half years. It has been nearly a decade.
Eric Kimberling founded Third Stage Consulting Group to help governments with their digital transformations. He said the feedback he has received from clients that use Tyler Technologies has been "fairly positive on the product side."
Kimberling's consulting work sometimes involves recommending the company. But he said, "There's been a bottleneck and a lack of responsiveness for support from Tyler Technologies."
"Because it's a proprietary technology, there's not a lot of people in the industry that know the technology," he said. "They're not as good at implementing their own product."
So where does that leave Kuznar's messy Mount Prospect story? Suffice it to say Kuznar is not in a good mood.
He wants the property tax refund that is rightfully his, but no one can tell him when it will come.
"It's just so annoying and ridiculous and stupid," Kuznar said.
The Cook County Treasurer's office is investigating alternative ways to pay Kuznar and the 25,000 other taxpayers in his predicament.
A Tyler Technologies spokesperson said other Cook County departments are using their system with no issues. The company said its Integrated Property Tax system integrates information from the Cook County Assessor, Clerk, and Treasurer into one system, and the Cook County Assessor's office has ben using the system for years.
Tyler Technologies said during the implementation process of its software for Cook County, it conducted several full mock data conversions to ensure accuracy, and all three offices said they were successful.
"We continue to fully support Cook County as they move forward with their data review and full system implementation," Tyler Technologies said.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story mistakenly reported Mr. Kuznar was owed a $36,000 refund. The correct amount is $3,600.