CBA Record November-December 2022

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

I recently read an insightful article succinctly outlining the origin of why today we pay our property taxes a year “late”: Richard Lee Stavins, “Real Estate Tax Timing in Illinois: A One-Time Solution Continues 88 years Later,” CBA Record 38 (July/August 2022). As a person who spent 38 years in government service immersed in the real property tax world of Cook County, thanks Richard for turning back the pages of history for an intriguing glimpse into our own version of a property tax uprising! Anyone interested in taking a deeper dive into the back story— with all of its economic, legal and historical twists and turns, and the surrounding political drama and upheaval of the Depression and early New Deal era—may find these sources regarding that tax revolt particularly fascinating: David T. Beito, Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance During the Great Depression 35-104 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Press, 1989) (Chapters 2, 3, and 4—the Chicago (Cook County) Tax Strike of 1930-1933); Homer F. Carey, “Mortgage Foreclosures in Cook County,” Vol. 19, 275-277 American Bar Association Journal (1933); Serena Gobbi, “The System at a Crossroads: Property Tax Reform, Revolt, and the Great Depression”, Fair and Equitable, Vol. 10, No. 10, 3-8 (International Association of Assessing Officers, 2012); People ex rel. Koester v. Board of Review of Cook County, 351 Ill. 301 (1932); People ex rel. Ahlschlager v. Board of Review of Cook County, 352 Ill. 157 (1933); and People ex rel. Courtney v. Association of Real Estate Tax-Payers of Illinois, 354 Ill.102 (1933). — Thomas Jaconetty

Local Solutions. Global Reach.

6 November/December 2022