It took little time after this year’s Cook County property tax bills became public for the political gamesmanship to begin.
This year’s bills showed Chicago homeowners’ median property tax bills jumped 16.7% over last year, according to the Cook County treasurer, while the collective bills for commercial real estate in the Loop dropped by $129 million.
Within days, the metastasizing debate over who was responsible for the rising tax burden collided with deepening ideological rifts in Chicago and Cook County. And it happened at an especially combustible moment — in the middle of the city’s delayed budget season and as several key Democratic primary contests ramp up.
Mayor Brandon Johnson and his allies, eager to steer public anger away from City Hall, pointed to the so-called head tax — a levy on large employers that Johnson is trying to revive — as an alternative to raising property taxes to close next year’s deficit.
Several aldermen, meanwhile, trained their fire on Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, whose office set the new assessments last year. Kaegi, a frequent target who is up for reelection in 2026, responded by accusing the county’s Board of Review, a three-member appeals body with which he has long feuded, of slashing downtown values.
And then there was the Chicago Teachers Union, one of Johnson’s most powerful supporters, which cast the bills as evidence of inequity. “Billionaires are paying less taxes for skyscrapers downtown while tax increases hit OUR neighborhoods,” the union wrote on social media, urging support for the head tax.
The head of the umbrella organization for local unions, the Chicago Federation of Labor’s Bob Reiter, has the opposite message from CTU: It’s urging aldermen not to reject a property tax hike outright.
On the other side, commercial building owners countered that their declining valuations reflect a bleak downtown market still struggling with pandemic-era vacancies and falling rents — not political favoritism. They argue that layering a new head tax on top of those conditions would worsen the city’s recovery.
Fueling much of it is a crisis of timing: a monthslong technology snafu involving Tyler Technologies, the Texas-based vendor whose software underpins the county’s tax system. The glitch delayed the release of bills by months, landing them not in the usual quiet of midsummer but at the peak of budget negotiations and election-season maneuvering.
Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, who is challenging Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle in March’s Democratic primary, said the bills left homeowners stuck with massive increases in their escrow accounts. Fresh off unanimous approval of her own budget, Preckwinkle reminded voters that the county has not raised its base property tax levy since 1996.
The political back-and-forth has obscured a more humdrum truth: There is no single architect of this year’s tax increases. Instead, the bills reflect a confluence of decisions — some technical, some political, some structural.
The levies: Who raised what
For any property owner, the most important fact about taxes is also the simplest: Bills rise when levies rise.
The collective levies of governments inside the city of Chicago grew $528.6 million in 2024, reaching $8.87 billion, according to the treasurer’s analysis. Chicago Public Schools make up the largest part of Chicagoans’ bills. CPS increased its levy by 4.5% to nearly $4 billion earlier this year, a hike unanimously approved by the Chicago Board of Education this summer, including members aligned with the teachers union.
CPS is subject to caps on how much it can increase property taxes, thanks to a state-set Property Tax Extension Limitation Law, or PTELL. But loopholes have allowed the district to raise money beyond that limit, according to a recent University of Chicago and Civic Federation analysis.
In CPS’ case, that includes a special property tax levy to help pay for Chicago teacher pensions and other special levies to pay for interest on borrowing, capital projects and payouts for workers injured on the job. Last tax year, that analysis found, the “uncapped” amount totaled nearly $700 million.
The city of Chicago’s levy rose 10.4% year over year to $1.77 billion, even though aldermen did not vote to increase base property taxes and haven’t for years. That is because governments routinely “extend” their levy to include new buildings or property value returning to the tax rolls after a tax increment financing district or other tax break expires.
Local officials could choose not to extend those levies, but while the move would lower bills, it would also sacrifice revenue needed to cover rising pension payments, wages and borrowing costs.
Cook County does the same: Its “base” levy hasn’t gone up in years, but its overall levy has to capture new property. The county’s increases have stayed below the rate of inflation, though.
Other smaller government levies also increased, including for the City Colleges of Chicago, Water Reclamation District and Chicago Park District.
The assessments: Splitting the pie
If levies determine how much governments collect, assessments determine who pays what share of the total. Typically, neighborhoods or property types whose values climb faster than average pay more than the previous year.
That was the case in Englewood and North Lawndale, where historically lower-valued assessments rose sharply.
Downtown office and hotel values, by contrast, plunged. So did their bills. That meant homeowners had to carry a bigger slice of the property tax pie.
Kaegi argued his office set realistic numbers for the Loop and that the Board of Review’s appeals reduced them too steeply.
“You cannot tell me that any hotel today is doing worse than it was in 2021 when these hotels were empty. Go look it up, their bills fell. And it’s not because of things that I did. We set those values high,” Kaegi told a Rainbow PUSH Coalition audience last weekend. “We’re picking up the tab for them. I feel the same indignance you feel.”
Larry Rogers, one of the Board of Review commissioners and a Kaegi adversary, accused the assessor of “bamboozling” the public and misjudging neighborhoods like Englewood and Garfield Park.
Both can be right: Increased investor interest has pushed up sales prices in certain South and West Side neighborhoods. And many high-profile Loop properties sold for losses in recent years or are experiencing record vacancies.
A forthcoming “sales ratio study” from Preckwinkle’s administration, expected in December, will compare actual sale prices with both agencies’ assessments, potentially offering a rare independent verdict. A previous study found a mixed bag when it came to accuracy from both offices.
How that lands on a tax bill
Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, whose name appears on the bills (and who is considering a mayoral run), said she is often wrongly blamed for rising property taxes. Instead, her office calculates and distributes what comes from the assessor, the reviewing agencies and the taxing bodies.
According to Pappas’ office, the median Chicago home saw its assessed value rise from $210,000 in 2023 to $250,500 last year, increasing its median bill by $638.
A good example of a typical, median home can be found near the corner of Kostner and Marquette avenues in West Lawn. The brick 1950s bungalow that is less than 1,000 square feet saw its market value jump by the Cook County assessor’s office from about $210,000 in 2023 up to $250,000 last year.
That’s close to what the home would go for on the open market. According to sales data tracked by the assessor, the median single-family home sale price in that area was about $257,000 in 2024.
The owner did not appeal and received the one tax break granted to homeowners. Their bill totaled $4,380, up from $3,751 the year before. Roughly $350 of that increase came from CPS, $125 from the city and about $40 from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.
There are only a few ways to get a break on bills: appeals or mistakes.
Unfortunately for most homeowners, it’s too late to appeal to the assessor or the Board of Review. They’ll have to wait until next year.
Appeals are mostly based on whether you can prove your property is worth less than what the assessor claims based on sales of comparable properties or by proving the assessor’s records are wrong — for example, if your home is smaller or has fewer features than what the assessor has in records or has been damaged by a flood or catastrophic even.
That West Lawn homeowner could try to get a “certificate of error,” to make some money back if they’re mistakenly missing an exemption for being a senior or disabled veteran, for example. Kaegi estimates about a third of property owners aren’t getting an exemption they’re owed.