Editor’s note: this article is part of a series of election coverage for Illinois’ March 17 primary contests. An additional Q&A with incumbent Cook County Tax Assessor Fritz Kaegi is available here.
Sensing an opportunity, Patrick Hynes is ready to run against his former boss.
Hynes got his start as a commercial appraiser of industrial properties and later became a longtime employee of the Cook County Assessor’s Office. He worked under former assessor Joseph Berrios, and later his current opponent for the post, Fritz Kaegi. Hynes left the office dissatisfied with Kaegi’s leadership, and was elected as Lyons Township assessor in 2021.
Kaegi is coming into the March 17 Democratic primary race with political weak points brought on by some highly publicized missteps that can be traced back to his office specifically and to the dysfunction of the county’s overall property tax system at large.
Amid a slowdown in development in Cook County, Hynes said his platform is aimed at expanding the tax base with new development that would help lighten the load for everyone. But Kaegi claims focusing on courting new development can invite opportunities for corruption from property owners seeking special treatment on their taxes.
Hynes sat down with The Real Deal to discuss his priorities and accusations that he wants to re-create a “pay-to-play” system in Cook County that was prevalent under past regimes.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
TRD: What made you want to run, and why now?
Hynes: I left [The Cook County Assessor’s Office] six years short of my pension eligibility date and took a pay cut to run for township assessor out in Lyons Township, where I could advocate for the 45,000 taxpayers that are in my neck of the woods … I audited the data that was used to produce the assessments and we discovered many million dollar homes that were not on the tax rolls … We got all that cleaned up and we were given an award this year from the Illinois Property Assessment Institute for the most outstanding performance in a large assessment jurisdiction for our work. But I’m starting to amass taxpayers who are aggrieved by what’s happening at the county assessor’s office … And it really got to the point where the only solution is to replace the person who’s causing the harm.
TRD: How do you think you can apply those lessons in Cook County, where you would be in charge of a much bigger jurisdiction if elected?
Hynes: I have the advantage in that … I still personally know the overwhelming majority of the people who work there. … I’m uniquely positioned to be able to get that office functional so that when a taxpayer has an issue and a complaint and they send in the requisite evidence, that we can actionably make a change and make sure that we have the assessment book corrected. … I understand it’s a big county, but there’s no excuse for not doing the primary duty of assessing everything that’s in the district and assessing it correctly.
TRD: At campaign events, you have mentioned expanding the role of field inspectors. Can you elaborate on that?
Hyde: If you think about how many times in one year hammers are swinging, shovels are in the ground, things are being built, that’s new taxable property. It is our duty to go out and inspect those properties and add them to the tax rolls and make sure they’re paying their fair share in property taxes. Every permit pulled in this county gets sent to the county assessor’s office … There’s no shortcuts to it. It takes a lot of continuing education, it takes a lot of experience and right now, that is simply not happening in this county. As a result, people just don’t have confidence that the numbers that are coming out of the county assessor’s office represent their fair and equitable distribution.
TRD: Some employees of former assessor Joseph Berrios, who you worked under, ended up facing criminal corruption charges. How can you reassure voters that the county won’t return to a pay-to-play style doing business?
Hynes: We’re looking forward and planning to have an office that is professional and competent, being very transparent with the data, being very transparent with our rubrics, so that everyone can see how we’re coming up with these values. My entire career has been built laser-focused on the taxpayer and justice for the taxpayer.
TRD: A lot of the frustration we’re hearing is regarding these big fluctuations between when a taxpayer initially gets their bill and when they succeed in getting an appeal from the Board of Review. How do you plan to improve that predictability in your role?
Hynes: It’s really important that the county assessor have as accurate of an assessment book as they possibly can the first time, because if we’re arguing about the assessment on appeal, we’ve already lost … They have a far larger volume than they’ve ever been designed to handle … and that’s a representation of taxpayers’ vote of non-confidence in the numbers that are coming out of the county assessor’s office. … The best way to reduce all the arguing about it is to produce a credible result the first time. It’s the easiest way to reduce the number of appeals that are going on.
TRD: Does the current taxbase have room to grow?
Hynes: We have a supply and demand imbalance, and yet we make it very difficult for folks to supply the market to meet that demand. … Our administration, should we be successful, is going to have a public facing Office of Economic Development. We plan to provide absolute certainty for those that are willing to invest in our market. If you’re going to build a 200,000-square-foot warehouse, there’s no reason that the county assessor can’t score that model and give you our assessment for it, so that you can predict what your property tax assessment is going to be before you even put a shovel in the ground. That’s going to help people get financing on the right loans and get building again. And as more of that stuff comes online, I’ll have more places to put the property tax burden.
TRD: Your opponent’s campaign is putting out messaging that you’re more favorable to commercial property owners. One example they point out is taking donations from property tax attorneys. What is your response to that criticism?
Hynes: It’s a distraction. … The overwhelming majority of the financing for this campaign comes from just regular blue collar people, plumbers and electricians. I am laser-focused on lowering tax rates and lowering property tax bills for residential taxpayers. How do you do that? Well, commercial taxpayers are part of that mix. Commercial taxpayers are golden in our system. They pay two-and-a-half times the rate for the taxes as homeowners. Every commercial property that’s put on the rolls is pitching in money to the cause [of K-through-12 education] and not sending children to the schools. … Getting our built environment to match what we need helps to rebalance our built environment and helps to put downward pressure on property tax rates.
TRD: Do you see any broader reforms to the overall system that you think are necessary?
Hynes: While I’m very excited about our opportunity as the county assessor, and I know that we can make impactful change immediately, we do need partnership from Springfield right now. In the state Constitution, Article 10 says that the state of Illinois shall bear the primary responsibility for supporting K-through-12 education. In my mind, that would be a 50% burden plus $1. That’s not where we’re at in this state. … The state is moving in the right direction to send more money to K-through-12 education, but they still have a long way to go. … Attacking this is going to be a priority within the county assessor’s office and some tax increment finance [TIF] district reform. … If you act like a grown up in the room, which we don’t have right now, you won’t have a lot of this finger pointing.
TRD: You mentioned TIF reform. What would you like to see?
Hynes: TIF districts, by themselves, are not a bad thing. … But the TIF district owes a fiduciary duty to the taxpayers to return value. … Right now, TIF districts are just getting raided and used for other purposes. The money is not being used for economic development. There’s no return to the taxpayers who are paying extra for the purpose that the TIF district was originally designed to do. So I would really like to see some tightening up of the rules on TIF districts that they’re earmarked for economic development.
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