Posted by Hal Dardick at 10:45 a.m.
Cook County homeowners will have to pay 10 percent more than they used to when the first installment of their property tax bills arrive thanks to a new state law.
The change won’t be lost on taxpayers because County Treasurer Maria Pappas inserted a prominent notice informing them of that detail in the bills mailed out last Friday.
“I felt it was my duty to inform taxpayers about this state-mandated change,” said Pappas, who opposed it. “It’s a matter of honesty and transparency about something that affects them.”
It used to be that taxpayers paid 50 percent of their prior year’s property
tax bill in the first installment. They then paid the rest, which
includes annual increases, when the second installment was due later in
the year.
Under the new legislation, which Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law in October, property
owners must pay 55 percent of the previous year’s total bill in the
first installment. That amounts to a 10 percent increase in the first installment.
The change should help make the two installments more equal this year,
which will perhaps partly blunt the effect of the expiration of a state
law that limited increases in Cook County residential property tax
bills caused by rising home values before the real-estate bubble burst.
But the change comes at an inopportune time for state legislators facing challenges in next Tuesday’s primary election because it reminds voters of the property tax burden — which many contend is too high in Illinois because of the state’s heavy reliance on that levy to fund education.
Legislators, in large part, brought the timing on themselves. In an effort to boost then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s prospects in the presidential primaries two years ago, they moved the primary up a month earlier.
Then last summer, they passed the law that increases the amount on paid on the first installment, which is due March 1. Those bills must be mailed at least a month in advance.