A few hours after my property tax bill arrived in the mail last week, I took the dog for a walk and bumped into a neighbor. “My taxes went up again,” he complained. “I thought they were going down.”
I’ll take this one point at a time. Yes, Mayor Daley pledged to hold the line on property taxes—he’s been saying that for the last several months. But this year’s tax bill is paying for last year’s budget, which raised property taxes by about $83 million, so your benefit from his recent pledge will come next year, if it comes at all. And it probably won’t, because the mayor’s not really freezing taxes as long as he keeps creating new tax increment financing districts—and, with the City Council’s consent, he’s averaging a new one each month. Every time the mayor creates another TIF district, the net effect is an increase in property taxes—funds collected in the district that would have gone to the schools, parks, and other public bodies instead end up in a TIF account, and these bodies have to raise their tax rates to make up the difference.
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Let’s move on to my neighbor’s second point. Yes, in 2007, after months of wrangling, the state legislature passed a bill that hiked the home owner’s exemption, and Governor Blagojevich signed it into law. The law was a big deal because the property tax you pay is essentially determined by multiplying the tax rate by the assessed value of your home and then subtracting the home owner’s exemption. In other words, the higher the exemption the less you pay.
But your 2007 property taxes—the ones you’re paying now—are based on an assessment done in 2006, when the housing market was still strong. The impact of the current bust won’t be felt on tax bills until the next assessment, in 2009.
That’s true, but quite a few things would have to happen for me to get elected.
If, by some turn of events, I won the right to stay on the ballot, I’d end up spending so much in legal fees that I wouldn’t have much money left to send out flyers. In the meantime, my opponent, backed by Daley and deep-pocketed incumbents, would be able to pay for glossy literature promoting him as a caring environmentalist who hates taxes.
