Property taxes imposed by government bodies within Cook County’s borders have grown at twice the rate of inflation over the past three decades, outpacing wage growth and driving an affordability crisis, a study by Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas’ office has found.
Pappas’ report, released Monday morning, condemns political leaders — many of them Democrats like herself — for exploiting loopholes in a state law designed to limit real estate tax increases. It calls on Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker and the Democratic-led General Assembly to enact significant reforms and find ways for local taxing agencies to cut spending.
“Illinois in 2025 had the dubious distinction of having the highest residential property tax rate in the nation. Chicago has the highest commercial rate in the U.S.,” Pappas said in a statement accompanying the study. “It’s time for the governor, state lawmakers and local government leaders to come up with a reform plan that works for taxpayers.”
Pappas’ report, titled “How State Laws Failed to Stop Decades of Skyrocketing Property Taxes: A Case for Reform,” arrives as the Illinois Department of Revenue is completing its own study of the state’s property tax system, due at the end of July. But Pappas said in her report that it was time for politicians to act “rather than produce another report that gets put on a shelf to gather cobwebs.”
Her study also comes in an election year when high property taxes are sure to be a major campaign issue in Pritzker’s race for a third term versus Republican Darren Bailey, as well as other statewide and scores of state legislative races. But large-scale remedies, such as finding alternative sources of revenue like a general tax increase to offset property tax cuts, are less likely when lawmakers and Pritzker are seeking reelection — though political pressures are lessened after the November general election in a lame-duck session.
Pappas’ study found that taxing bodies within Cook County levied $19.2 billion in property taxes in 2024, up nearly 182% from the $6.8 billion in real estate taxes imposed in 1995. During that time, inflation rose by 91% and average wages increased by 161%, the report said.
“The annual increases in taxes are relentless, taking more and more money out of people’s pockets,” said Pappas, who has been treasurer since 1998 and who is seeking reelection in November while declaring her interest in a Chicago mayoral bid in 2027. “I see it every day in my office, with people wondering how they are going to pay their tax bills or even whether they can stay in their homes.”
Pappas’ duties as county treasurer are to send out property tax bills, collect real estate tax payments and distribute the revenues to more than 2,000 taxing bodies in Cook County.
The study found “a particularly steep jump” in property taxes levied in Chicago over the last 10 years, citing both the city government and Chicago Public Schools being forced to deal with rising state-mandated pension payments.
Property taxes imposed by CPS, City Hall and all other local taxing bodies within Chicago’s boundaries rose to nearly $8.9 billion in 2024 from about $2.9 billion in 1995 — a 211% jump. The study identified 132 suburbs in Cook County, including schools, municipalities, park districts and other agencies, that raised property taxes 160% to $10.3 billion from less than $4 billion over the same period.
The report noted that the state government’s share of funding local grade and high schools is among the lowest in the country, putting greater pressure on school districts to rely on property taxes to fund education. It also pointed out actions in Springfield that have reduced the share of state income taxes that local governments receive, while the state has forced municipalities to significantly increase their contributions to police and fire pension funds to make up for years of underfunding.
The study also identified that 153 school districts within Cook County accounted for nearly 55% of the county’s property taxes levied in 2024, and those districts hiked taxes by 189.4% during the past 30 years to pay for teachers’ salaries, textbooks, transportation, building maintenance, construction and other operating costs.
The report contends that the mid-1990s Property Tax Extension Limitation Law, known as PTELL, which was aimed at limiting annual property tax increases by non-home-rule governments to the lesser of 5% or the rate of inflation, is filled with loopholes that local taxing bodies exploit.
The report also notes the rapid growth in tax increment financing districts, which divert a portion of property tax revenues to pay for development costs, and are not limited by PTELL. In the past 30 years, TIF district taxes in Chicago and the suburbs swelled to more than $1.8 billion from $160 million, an increase of 1,034%, as the number of TIF districts rose to 418 from 154, while the number of properties in those districts grew to 281,880 from 18,314.
One notable exception to the upward trend was within Cook County government itself, the report found. Cook County government bucked the 30-year trend, increasing property taxes by just 26%, although that was largely due to increases in the county sales tax to provide an alternative revenue source.
“Easing the tax burden will not be easy,” Pappas’ report said. “Schools rely heavily on property taxes because of inadequate state funding; local governments rely on them to pay down pension debt; the fiscally strapped state currently does not bring in enough revenue to provide alternative funding; PTELL is full of loopholes; and the state’s nation-high number of local governments stymies efficiency.”
The report suggested a range of potential solutions: plugging loopholes in the tax limitation act; consolidating government agencies, such as merging townships with municipalities in communities like Berwyn, Oak Park and River Forest, where the two bodies share boundaries; and closing low-enrollment schools within CPS.
The report also suggests restoring the local share of state income taxes to local governments, merging Chicago’s teacher pension fund with the state — something opposed by the Chicago Teachers Union — and reducing state and local pension obligations, which would be legally dubious since the Illinois Supreme Court ruled more than a decade ago that public employee pension benefits were a contract from the time of hiring that cannot “be diminished or impaired.”
For alternative revenue sources to offset property tax cuts, the report suggests many ideas that have been tried or floated in the past without success: making another attempt at the voter-rejected plan pushed by Pritzker in 2020 to change the state constitution to a federal-style graduated income tax or a surcharge on millionaires, hiking the state’s income tax coupled with higher tax credits for lower incomes, expanding the sales tax base to include more services and imposing state income taxes on retirement incomes of more than $100,000.
After he was unopposed in winning the March 17 Democratic primary for governor, Pritzker told the Tribune he was “trying to lower property taxes” by increasing state funding for local schools, which had previously ranked among the worst in the nation.
“We’re not even average in the country yet, but (we’ve made) a whole lot of progress,” he said. “We’ve got more progress to make, like we do on so many other things, but, boy, look at how far we’ve come, and I want to continue to do that.”
Still, Pritzker said local property taxpayers should raise the issue with local school boards.
“Why are you not holding the line now that you’re getting more money from the state? Why are you not holding the line? Why are you raising property taxes when you’re getting more money from the state? That is a question that people ought to be asking of their school board members,” Pritzker said.
Bailey, a downstate farmer who is making his second bid to unseat Pritzker, has already pledged to lower property taxes, a campaign plank in his Republican challenge to the incumbent.
But Pritzker noted Bailey repeatedly voted to increase property taxes while serving for 17 years, including 12 as president, on the North Clay Community Unit School District 25 Board of Education.
“We have a responsibility at the state level, which Darren Bailey will not acknowledge, that we need to fund schools better,” Pritzker said, adding that Bailey now runs a private school using a controversial conservative Bible-based curriculum.
“He doesn’t answer the other half of the question. He says, ‘Let’s lower property taxes. Great. How are we going to pay for schools? He has no answer to that. And, meanwhile, he’s running a private school that’s teaching people things that I think all of us would say that we shouldn’t be funding that sort of thing.”
