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The missed properties can be found across the county, from an $11 million mansion on the North Shore to swaths of modest homes in tiny south suburban Lynwood.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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The Cook County Assessor is the worst run assessor in the area. As an appraiser, I can go to the website in Lake and get a sketch and square footage of almost every residential property in the county. In Cook, just the square footage and the year built. With newer properties, it’s mostly accurate. With older properties, it’s totally unreliable. In addition, the Cook County Assessor does not have square footage in their records for condominiums!
The whole office should be outsourced to a private entity. It’s sad that employees can’t get things fixed that are obvious. The dysfunction in Cook and Chicago seems endless – but that’s how the Democrats set it all up for ‘clout’.
What evidence can you offer that a private entity, contracted by the County, would do better?
Ask yourself: Can they really do any worse?
My suggestion is based on every Fortune 50 company has contracted out it’s employee healthcare to company’s like United Healthcare, with improved efficiency and savings and annual performance metrics. Same could be done for the assessors office – it’s not rocket science.
Private entities get paid to do a job, don’t complete the job don’t get paid. County employees get paid to take up space whether they do the job or not.
It’s probably true that Kaegi is making a lot fewer mistakes than his predecessors made. But, as the article points out, it requires a lot of staff and local government cooperation to keep track of what’s been built. A land value tax, excluding the value of all improvements, would simplify the system and such errors simply could not occur. Such a reform would reduce the cost of maintaining assessments and was recently endorsed by a bunch of prominent economists.