Cook County Treasurer's study breaks down causes of skyrocketing property taxes

Skyrocketing property taxes continue to be a hot-button issue in Cook County — particularly since last fall, when many residents saw their tax bills increase by 100% or more.

The Cook County Treasurer's office just completed a 30-year analysis of just why property taxes have been soaring.

Read the study: "How State Laws Failed to Stop Decades of Skyrocketing Property Taxes"

Investigators from the office found from 1995 to 2024, Cook County property taxes jumped 182% to $19.2 billion — more than twice the rate of inflation, which went up about 91% while wages increased 161%.

This means more of Cook County homeowners' hard-earned money is going toward paying property taxes than ever before.

"The 30-year study really pinpoints what's wrong. So the biggest problem is that there's just spending like drunken sailors. I mean, so every year, all 562 governments come into Cook County, and they say: 'You know what? This is how much money I want,'" Pappas said. "So what's happened is that amount of money went from $12 billion to $19 billion. That's a lot of extra money."

The additional funding that so many different governing bodies in Cook County are demanding has to come from somewhere, Pappas emphasized. That somewhere tends to be property taxes.

Illinois state lawmakers came up with regulations to limit property tax hikes, Pappas said. Notably, this included the Property Tax Limitation Law (PTELL), which went into effect in Cook County in 1994 and limits property tax increases to 5% or the rate of inflation for the preceding levy year — whichever is less — "and that's where you have to stop," Pappas said.

"What happened is there's six ways to get around that," Pappas said. "They take advantage of these little, little cracks in the wall, and they slither through, and they say: 'You know what? Let's do a referendum this year. We're going to put on $30 million for a new swimming pool, OK?' And just like the last election, 20% of the people come out, not 80%, and the $30 million passes, and it becomes added to the property tax."

Also key among the loopholes how no limits are placed on tax increases in special taxing districts such as tax increment financing districts or TIFs.

"Tax increment financing districts have gone up 1,000%," said Pappas. "Bond deals aren't subject to any kind of structure at all."

In a TIF district, property tax dollars for schools, parks, and other taxing districts are frozen for at least 23 years, so that all property tax increases afterward to go into a fund to improve struggling neighborhoods. TIF districts have been the subject of intense criticism for decades for a variety of reasons — notably, longtime Chicago Reader columnist Ben Joravsky characterized the TIF program as amounting to a slush fund in a series of columns years ago.

Meanwhile, Pappas also emphasized that over a 30-year period, K-12 public school systems are up to accounting nearly 55 of the total property tax burden in Cook County.

Pappas' office added that state government exacerbated the problem by enhancing local government pension benefits while lowering the share of state revenue that goes to cities and villages whose taxes rose by 201% over 30 years.

So what is to be done about all this?

"This is like pouring gasoline on a fire. The fire's the people at my counter, OK, who come in complaining. This study pours gas on it to ignite some action," Pappas said. "The biggest action has to be to cut spending at the local level. You can't go to Springfield and say: 'Hey, you know what? You need to give me more money,' because there's no money there to give. What has to happen in Springfield, they have to close these loopholes — and there's six or seven of them that have to be closed."

Pappas said her report is calling attention to a problem that "needs to be fixed in a way that the spending stops."

Meanwhile, asked Monday morning if she is still running for mayor of Chicago, Pappas said, "I'm in!"