{"id":754243,"date":"2026-04-26T11:01:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T11:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/754243\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T11:01:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T11:01:14","slug":"months-after-late-property-tax-bills-thousands-still-waiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/754243\/","title":{"rendered":"Months after late property tax bills, thousands still waiting"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story is a collaboration between the Illinois Answers Project<\/a> and the Chicago Tribune<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Property tax bills arrived months late<\/a> for hundreds of thousands of Cook County homeowners last year, causing headaches and confusion<\/a> for property owners and the local governments they fund.<\/p>\n

Five months later, thousands are still waiting for bills and tens of thousands are waiting for refunds, the latest development in the technology upgrade debacle that has roiled the county\u2019s tax system for more than four years with no clear end in sight<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what happened \u2014\u00a0I just never got the bill,\u201d said Melvin Brooks, a 72-year-old retired pastor.<\/p>\n

Brooks said he called the Cook County treasurer\u2019s office to ask why he never learned what he owes on his home in west suburban Bellwood.<\/p>\n

He worries he\u2019ll get a double bill all at once, a whopping unplanned cost for the home where his children and grandchildren now live, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried online, but I can\u2019t get through,\u201d Brooks said. \u201cThere\u2019s some kind of glitch or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cglitch\u201d is actually dozens of issues that have bedeviled county officials and the technology contractor, Tyler Technologies. As of last week, nearly 2,900 second installment bills that were supposed to go out last November were still unsent \u2014 including the bungalow Brooks has owned since 1982. Another 8,560 first installment bills from this spring were also in limbo until Friday, when 3,897 were mailed.<\/p>\n

That could mean a subset of taxpayers get three property tax bills in rapid succession this year: ones that should have been due last December, this April, and the next round slated for the late summer or early fall.<\/p>\n

At the same time, officials say they\u2019re working through a backlog of roughly 91,000 tax refunds totaling some $200 million in overpayments that still need to be returned.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the latest black eye for the county in the property tax mess that has set off a yearslong circular blame game among elected officials over who should be held accountable. Tyler\u2019s multimillion-dollar upgrade of the county\u2019s property tax systems has hit countless roadblocks and blown multiple deadlines since it kicked off more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n

When complete, it promises to streamline operations across the county\u2019s property tax offices by converting 20 years of data from disparate systems and finally retire the county\u2019s aging mainframe computers.<\/p>\n

In addition to the other problems, taxing districts like schools and libraries have struggled to understand how much property tax revenue they can count on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re doing the best we can with a bad vendor,\u201d said Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, Tyler\u2019s chief critic, adding that the company\u2019s lack of urgency to fix ongoing issues amounts to \u201ctechnical incompetence and insanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Extra requirements and functionality requests are a given with a project as large as Cook County\u2019s conversion, a Tyler Technologies spokesperson said in an email, adding the company always responded quickly with fixes.<\/p>\n

Pappas is barred from engaging with Tyler officials working on the project after its CEO said she subjected workers to months of verbal abuse and threats to officials\u2019 reputations. Pappas didn\u2019t dispute using harsh language and said she was trying to hold the company to task on taxpayers\u2019 behalf. Tyler said her ongoing criticism has detracted from finding solutions when new problems emerge.<\/p>\n

In November, 8,560 bills were excluded when the county mailed out second installment bills for all of the county\u2019s more than 1.8 million parcels. It wasn\u2019t until March that a first batch of those, about 4,200 bills, went out. Another 1,000 or so were mailed at the start of April, and just under 500 more were sent April 17, per the treasurer\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Officials could not estimate the total amount of taxes due in the unsent bills. But the more than 2,800 properties that had not received bills as of last week totaled nearly $1.14 billion in taxable market value, according to the latest figures from the Cook County assessor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle downplayed the issue, noting at a mid-April media availability that the bills represent a \u201crelatively small fraction\u201d of the county\u2019s tax base. The unresolved ones will \u201cbe out as soon as we can get them out.\u201d<\/p>\n

No taxpayers will be assessed late fees or penalties if they pay their bill within 30 days of receiving it, Pappas said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll remaining PINS are being processed in collaboration with the treasurer\u2019s office,\u201d Tyler\u2019s spokesperson\u00a0said in an email, referring to the property index numbers associated with each parcel and property tax bill.<\/p>\n

Records requested by Illinois Answers Project and the Tribune noted thousands of properties across the county with unsent bills \u2014 each accompanied with an associated \u201creason\u201d for the issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cPAY Message AMT <> MIS\u201d was listed as the reason for more than a thousand unsent bills. That refers to a mismatch between the county\u2019s old mainframe and the portion of the bill that lists what the property owner paid for its first installment, a treasurer\u2019s office official said. Either the number was incorrect, or that payment wasn\u2019t factored into the due balance for the second installment.<\/p>\n

If a full year\u2019s charge was $2,500, for example, and a homeowner paid $1,000 for the first installment, the bill under the new system might have incorrectly recorded the payment as\u00a0 $980. So the owner was \u2014 on paper \u2014 on the hook for $1,520 instead of the accurate remaining amount of $1,500.<\/p>\n

About another 800 defective bills were blamed on \u201c1597 Missed Payments from Logan email on 11\/3,\u201d referring to a database administrator in the treasurer\u2019s office. That defect involves payments that were not properly factored into final calculations during a system blackout that occurred while switching to the new Tyler platform, officials said. Nearly 300 bills simply listed the reason for the mistake as \u201cunknown.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThose notations amount to identifying possible explanations for a defect and a possible pathway to resolution,\u201d treasurer\u2019s office spokesman Michael Puccinelli said in an email. \u201cWe say \u2018possible\u2019 because in a proprietary system it\u2019s impossible for CCTO employees to know exactly which proposed solutions will work to eliminate defects in Tyler\u2019s system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The list of outstanding bills provided on April 14 held Tyler responsible for about 2,700 of them, with the treasurer\u2019s office on the hook for about 600.<\/p>\n

Affected properties appear scattered across the county and by type of parcel. They included more than 2,600 residential buildings, 67 apartment buildings and 380 commercial properties. Just over half were located in Chicago, with the rest spread across 121 suburbs.<\/p>\n

Sheila Sales, 82, has been calling the treasurer\u2019s office every few weeks since last fall to ask when she\u2019ll receive her bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spend an hour on the phone, and then they just tell me there\u2019s something wrong with the computer and they don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on,\u201d said Sales, who said she never encountered a similar issue in the 40-plus years she\u2019s owned her home in Chicago\u2019s Washington Heights neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need my bill,\u201d Sales said. \u201cI don\u2019t want them to give me a big 2- or 3-year bill where I can\u2019t hardly pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

South and West Side homeowners are already reeling from sharply higher property charges when last year\u2019s round of bills came out.<\/p>\n

Brooks is similarly worried for the security of his kids and grandkids in his Bellwood home. The area has been experiencing gentrification pressures, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anything were to happen, it would fall on me,\u201d Brooks said. \u201cI would be concerned about it for anybody who this shoe is fitting \u2026 if you can\u2019t pay it, your house will go on the auction block.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taxing bodies out of the loop on revenues<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, smaller taxing bodies stung by late property tax distributions after fall bills were paid are still in the dark about how much money they should expect, when it might drop and how to account for it.<\/p>\n

Su Reynders, executive director of the Mount Prospect Public Library, told her board earlier this month that the library received $4.6 million from the 2024 tax year. Unfortunately, it landed during the library\u2019s 2026 fiscal year and was still about $670,000 short of what they expected.<\/p>\n

Trust in the county is low after months of complaints about communications and explanations for delays. Some districts were overpaid or\u00a0underpaid last year, a problem that wasn\u2019t apparent to county officials until the Tribune asked about it.<\/p>\n

The irregular flow of cash will distort their financial reports and could deepen mistrust that the county has adequate guardrails to properly account for where taxpayers\u2019 money is ending up.<\/p>\n

\"SuSu Reynders, executive director of the Mount Prospect Public Library, on\u00a0April 24, 2026,\u00a0at the library. (Talia Sprague\/for the Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Reynders and Amy Franco from the Hillside Public Library have been surveying other libraries in recent months and learned several are still waiting for 2024 tax year distributions. The 16 districts Franco recently surveyed estimate they are still missing a combined $4.2 million from the 2024 tax year.<\/p>\n

While districts receive emails when new money is deposited, it\u2019s difficult for those leaders to confirm how much they are still owed because the county\u2019s extranet for all of its taxing agencies is not working, either. The extranet helps leaders track how much property tax revenue has been collected, which tax year the money comes from and which sub-funds \u2014 for things like building maintenance, workers\u2019 compensation, paying back bonds, pensions or insurance \u2014 those payments belong to.<\/p>\n

A treasurer\u2019s office official said earlier this month their priority was getting money out the door before making the extranet fully functional and that they \u201ccontinue to work through defects with that distribution data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tyler\u2019s spokesperson said the sub-fund breakout was a recent request and was a new requirement, \u201cnot an issue with the software. We responded quickly to this request and have provided the information to them for validation.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the problems, the treasurer\u2019s office said, is that Tyler cannot say how much money should be distributed to each sub-fund. Without full accounting, required financial statements, annual audits, budget tracking and forecasting are thrown off and libraries risk spending money that\u2019s supposed to be dedicated to pensions on building maintenance, Franco said.<\/p>\n

For Reynders, that outstanding $670,000 is key to making the math work on an ongoing renovation that will drain the library\u2019s capital reserves. She said it\u2019s been nearly 21 years since her library was renovated. \u201cI\u2019ve been careful and fiscally responsible planning for this, but if the money doesn\u2019t come, then what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy No. 1 question right now is, where is the remainder of the tax year \u201924 payments? Is it sitting in an account and they\u2019re trying to figure out how to distribute it? Or is that money gone and they don\u2019t know how to rectify? Does the money exist?\u201d Reynders said. \u201cI will not let this go. I am absolutely committed to seeing that $670,000 accounted for.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s constant audits in here,\u201d Pappas said. \u201cThere\u2019s no skimming in here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Preckwinkle has also pledged that this year\u2019s regularly scheduled audit of county finances will include a focus on information technology.<\/p>\n

\u2018Back and forth\u2019 on refunds<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, tens of thousands are waiting for the slow trickle of refunds to make their way into the mail.<\/p>\n

The treasurer\u2019s office has not been able to issue bulk refunds for close to a year \u201cdue to the large number of underlying data issues that require them to check each refund individually before issuing,\u201d according to the county\u2019s property tax tracker.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get a batch of 300 refunds, and 60% of them are wrong, so they have to go back,\u201d Pappas said in an interview Thursday. \u201cSo it goes back and forth and back and forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duplicate and overpayment refunds need to be split into the original tax, the penalty calculation, and interest. Some of those refunds are attributed to the wrong tax year, too.<\/p>\n

The problem stems from \u201cdata details that were not provided to us\u201d before the system blackout, Tyler\u2019s spokesperson said. The data is now in Pappas\u2019 hands for testing and validation, they said.<\/p>\n

Glenn Guttman, a property tax attorney whose business runs on receiving a percentage of successful property tax appeal refunds, said industry colleagues considered taking the treasurer to court but ultimately decided against it. No matter what a judge ruled, the treasurer\u2019s office simply can\u2019t cut the check.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t chase anything down. Everything is done from our end, a lot of people are waiting for these refund checks. There\u2019s nothing we can do to implore the treasurer to write a check.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he understands there are few whose hearts would bleed for appeals attorneys, he notes behind every stalled refund is a person or a business who likely needs that money to get by.<\/p>\n

Various county offices \u201calways say one or two months,\u201d Guttman said. \u201cApril was the first time we had \u2014 in one year \u2014 any refund come through from the treasurer\u2019s office.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quig is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Nitkin is a reporter for the Illinois Answers Project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is a collaboration between the Illinois Answers Project and the Chicago Tribune. Property tax bills arrived…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":754244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[14671,14674,14675,960,5404,14720,14683,11612,14687,5386,1818,1370,14695,14696,6287,50,14704,14706,14708,80,14714,14718,23499],"class_list":["post-754243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-berwyn","tag-burbank","tag-burr-ridge","tag-chicago","tag-cook-county","tag-daily-southtown","tag-dolton","tag-evanston","tag-glencoe","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-latest-headlines","tag-lincolnwood","tag-markham","tag-maywood","tag-news","tag-orland-park","tag-palos-heights","tag-park-ridge","tag-politics","tag-skokie","tag-wheeling","tag-wilmette"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116470670436571285","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}