Yahoo Finance County property tax official running for sixth term rakes in cash from appeals industry
As Larry Rogers Jr. vies for his sixth term on the Cook County Board of Review, he’s raised most of his campaign cash from property tax interests and others who have done business before the obscure but influential panel, and among them is the Chicago Bears’ lawyer in the team’s high-profile dispute over the value of its possible stadium site in Arlington Heights.
The $135,000 Rogers has collected in the last year from professionals involved in the business of appealing property taxes has become a flashpoint in the proxy fight between him and Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, who’s backing Rogers’ opponent in the March 19 Democratic primary.
Rogers in 2004 joined the board that considers appeals of property assessments handed down by Kaegi’s office, making Rogers the board’s longest serving member. In that time, he has repeatedly tapped people tied to the real estate tax industry for political contributions. State campaign records show Rogers has collected more than $800,000 from property tax attorneys, appraisers and consulting firms just in the last 10 years.
While the contributions are legal, accepting money from people with business before the board has long been criticized as an inherent conflict of interest. Rogers also has run into issues with accepting campaign contributions from people in the property tax appeal industry when ethics officials dinged him in 2018 for accepting contributions from law firms and other businesses that challenge assessments beyond annual fundraising caps.
In an interview last week with the Tribune, Rogers defended accepting the campaign cash and said, as an attorney, his donor pool would naturally include fellow attorneys.
“We have always made it a point to comply with the ethics rules with regard to contributions and any improper contributions have always been returned,” Rogers said.
“We don’t apply any pressure to anyone, exhibit any favoritism to anyone,” he continued. “I believe as long as I’m in compliance with the law and the limits in terms of what can be contributed and accepted, we welcome the support.”
A Tribune analysis of campaign records found that 70% of Rogers’ campaign contributions dating back to 2014 came from individual attorneys, law firms, appraisers, consultants and others involved in the business of appealing property taxes in Cook County. The $135,000 Rogers received from property tax interests since the start of 2023 represent 60% of all of his contributions in that span.
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One of Rogers’ most recent contributors was Matthew Tully, the attorney who last month argued in front of the Board of Review that the Arlington Heights site now owned by the Bears should receive a cut in its property assessment. Tully works for the law firm Tully & Associates, founded by his father, former Cook County Assessor Thomas Tully.
Matthew Tully gave Rogers’ campaign committee $1,000 last month, on top of $1,000 in January 2023 and $500 last September. The Bears submitted their appeal to the board in mid-December.
The Board of Review is a quasi-judicial body that hears taxpayer complaints about overvaluations of property. Owners of homes, businesses and commercial buildings can appeal to the board to lower their property’s assessed value and therefore lower their property tax bill. While home and small business owners often file appeals on their own, larger properties owned by corporations must tap lawyers to go before the Board of Review to make their case and potentially save millions of dollars annually on a lower tax bill.
On Wednesday, the Board of Review notified the Bears that it did not lower the Arlington Heights property assessment. That decision is not final, however. The board could still change its decision before certification, which is expected at the end of February. Also, the team could reach a settlement with school district officials or ask the board for re-review.
Rogers, who is also a trial attorney, has the backing of the Cook County Democratic Party and other major party figures: Mayor Brandon Johnson is set to appear at a fundraiser for Rogers on Thursday.
Rogers’ main opponent in the primary, Larecia Tucker, is being backed by Kaegi. Both Tucker and Kaegi have previously pointed to Rogers’ acceptance of contributions from property tax lawyers and appraisers as unethical and corrosive to the public’s trust in government.
They have noted that commissioners on the board who take such money are rebuffing the county’s Office of the Independent Inspector General recommendation in 2015 that the board ban soliciting or accepting campaign contributions from attorneys and litigants who appear before them.
The appearance of impropriety “serves to undermine the credibility of the office,” the inspector general’s report said at the time. Absent a ban, the report recommended the board establish a recusal policy and mandate written disclosures of actual or potential conflicts.
The board declined to take up those recommendations, the inspector general reported later that year, because the inspector general’s office “does not have jurisdiction over it.”
In an interview, Rogers pointed the finger right back at his opponent, saying Kaegi’s financial backing of Tucker puts her in immediate conflict, given that the board is meant to act as an independent check on the assessor’s work. Kaegi, his family and campaign have contributed more than $28,000 to Tucker directly. Kaegi also loaned $100,000 to a new super PAC that appears aimed at defeating Rogers, whose campaign fund has eight times as much money as Tucker’s, according to state records.
“I’m proud to support Larecia Tucker because I know that she will be driven by the facts, has refused to accept donations from tax lawyers, and I trust that her judgment will lead her to help everyday taxpayers, not the big corporations who have bought Larry Rogers,” Kaegi said in a statement.
Tucker, too, has previously told the Tribune she would remain independent, and her decisions would reflect “the market, not what Fritz has told me.”
Rogers said board practices create a buffer between any commissioner and any lawyer filing an appeal regardless of whether the lawyer contributed to a commissioner’s campaign fund. He defers to his team of analysts on his final appeal decisions, he said.
“The analysts who are hearing those appeals are staff from each commissioner and I do not weigh in on their decisions and I do not allow any staff to contribute or participate in any fundraising activities,” Rogers said. “I will never — and don’t ever — interfere with decisions made by my analysts. Contributions have nothing to do with evaluations in the office.”
Rogers’ fellow commissioner, Samantha Steele, says those practices are not formalized, and a lack of clear guidelines allows commissioners to make decisions based on their own opinions.
Rogers signaled at a Board of Review hearing in late January that he agreed with Tully that Kaegi’s office over-assessed the former racetrack site where the Bears plan to build a stadium. Rogers said he was concerned — as Tully argued — that the assessor had engaged in “sales chasing,” a frowned-upon practice in which assessment officials base the value of a property on a recent sale.
Kaegi’s office assessed the property at $197 million — roughly the same as the widely announced sales price. But Kaegi’s office has said that assessment was based on comparative large property sales in northwest suburban communities such as Elk Grove Village, Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates. Officials with the assessor’s office deny any allegations of sales chasing.
The Bears and local school districts must reach an agreed upon assessment or Rogers and his two fellow commissioners, along with their staffs, will collectively weigh the submitted evidence and set a final valuation by late February.
Matthew Tully did not respond to a request for comment. He represented the Chicago Tribune Co. in front of the Board of Review in 2018 for the newspaper’s printing plant and office property by Chicago and Halsted avenues.
Over the past decade, Thomas Tully has contributed just shy of $25,000 to Rogers both personally and through his own campaign fund, Citizens for Tully. Formed in 1975, the fund is still active despite Tully leaving elected office nearly half a century ago, largely thanks to loans from Tully himself. He also was a frequent contributor to former county Assessor Joe Berrios.
Rogers is not the only Board of Review commissioner to accept campaign cash from those involved in the property tax industry. Both Matt and Tom Tully — and many other property tax interests — have contributed to committee funds for Board of Review Commissioner George Cardenas, who was elected to the seat in 2022.
County ethics rules limit contributions from people or businesses that have “sought official action by the county within the preceding four years” to $750 in a non-election year and $1,500 in an election year.
In 2018, the county’s ethics board dinged Rogers and other members of the Board of Review for accepting contributions that exceeded those caps. Rogers agreed to return $48,750. But many of those contributors turned around to give to a PAC that Rogers was a member of called Community First PAC.
Among property tax firms that were refunded excess contributions that then gave to the PAC: Chapekis & Chapekis, Flanagan & Bilton, Siegel & Callahan, P.C. and attorneys with McCracken, Walsh, Carlisle & deLaVan. Community First PAC did not transfer funds to Rogers, but the PAC did pay for two consultants that Rogers also has used.
“I am not a member of Community First PAC any longer. It has not made any contributions to me. I don’t even know how — I don’t think it did anything, quite frankly,” he said.
Rogers was involved in a separate ethics spat over his other work as a trial lawyer at Power Rogers, a personal injury, medical malpractice and civil rights firm founded by his late father. Rogers is an equity partner at the firm, which represented individuals who sued various county offices.
In all, Power Rogers won their clients just under $20 million in settlements paid by county taxpayers between 2016 and 2018 for wrongful death, medical negligence and malpractice, and civil rights violations, according to board records.
In 2021, the county’s Board of Ethics sought fines against Rogers for violating a ban against having an economic interest in the representation of parties suing Cook County on three of those cases. The board issued fines of $3,000, saying Rogers failed to prove he did not economically benefit from those settlements. He’d previously pledged in 2018 that his firm screened him from any involvement in county cases, and did not pay him fees from any county settlements.
In the fall of 2021, Rogers filed a circuit court suit to fight the ethics board’s findings. A little over a year later, he dismissed the suit and in December 2022, paid the fine.
