First-term Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, a progressive who took office in 2018 following a successful campaign to oust embattled Democratic insider Joe Berrios, announced Wednesday he’ll run for reelection next year.
Kaegi, whose office determines residential and commercial values in the county’s property tax process, was joined by a slate of backers including Democratic U.S. Reps. Chuy Garcia, Marie Newman and Robin Kelly as well as several progressive-minded aldermen and county commissioners, in making his announcement Wednesday morning.
“Over my past term, we’ve continued our fight to bring transparency and equity to a rigged system that put favoritism above fairness,” Kaegi said during a news conference in South Shore. “We got right to work and fixed the corruption and unfairness of the last administration.”
“All of this has contributed to eliminating distortions and biases in assessments so that our tax base is becoming more equitable,” he said.
Kaegi was an unexpected winner when Berrios conceded in the 2018 Democratic primary. The longtime assessor’s loss followed the publication of “The Tax Divide,” a series by the Tribune and ProPublica Illinois that found assessments under Berrios shifted an outsized portion of the property tax burden from the wealthy to the poor.
After taking office, Kaegi replaced most of Berrios’ top staffers and implemented multiple changes in the property tax assessment process, but not without criticism. Some in the development community say he is scaring investors away from commercial developments following a round of assessments in 2019 that shifted some tax burden from homes to businesses in the northern portion of the county.
An investigation by the Sun-Times this year also reported his office made numerous errors in calculating tax breaks intended for low-income seniors, sparking a lengthy standoff with the clerk and treasurer’s office, but Kaegi has attributed the problem to policies from “previous administrations” and said the mistakes were fixed.
"term" - Google News
August 11, 2021 at 10:58PM
https://ift.tt/3AyOvVT
Cook County Assessor to seek second term - Chicago Tribune
"term" - Google News
https://ift.tt/35lXs52
https://ift.tt/2L1ho5r
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Cook County Assessor to seek second term - Chicago Tribune"
Post a Comment