When Cook County second-installment property tax bills finally were mailed in mid-November after months of delay, we thought that would be the end of the debacle that has been the county’s technology systems overhaul, contracted out to Texas-based Tyler Technologies.
Oh, silly, naive us.
The Dec. 15 deadline for property owners to pay those bills now has come and gone as well, and taxing bodies throughout the county still haven’t received their property tax hauls. Once again, Tyler appears to be at the root of the problem, as the Tribune reported on Monday.
The situation is growing ever more expensive for those governmental units — and, of course, the taxpayers who support them. The delay is forcing school districts throughout the county to borrow to cover ordinary expenses, such as payroll. The Tribune story showed how suburban districts are amassing millions in debt, costing them in some cases hundreds of thousands in interest and even more in lost investment income.
Palatine School District 15, for example, projects the delay will cost it more than $1 million when all is said and done. That’s money that simply is being flushed down the toilet — resources that otherwise could go to augmenting the educations of the students served by those schools.
The situation is far worse at Chicago Public Schools. Given that CPS is the nation’s fourth-largest public school district, its costs stemming from the county’s failure are downright explosive. From mid-August through the end of this month, it will have cost CPS more than $33 million (in interest on loans and interest it owes the pension plan for its workers while it delays paying into the fund) because of the lack of property tax revenue. If this awful situation persists into the new year, it will cost CPS an additional $220,000 every day.
This for a school system that is flirting with insolvency with each passing budget year.
“I’m embarrassed and appalled we’re not done yet,” Cook County Chief Technology Officer Tom Lynch told Cook County commissioners last week.
But then he went on to echo the refrain we’ve heard repeatedly from everyone involved in this mess for months on end: “I take accountability for that, as I hope my counterparts do in the property offices. We all have to do this together.”
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle leaves the boardroom after presiding over a Cook County Board meeting on April 10, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has taken all too little ownership of this fiasco, given that she was the driving force behind contracting with Tyler in the first place — beginning a decade ago — and opted to continue with Tyler in 2020 after initial results were bad. Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, whose office is responsible for compiling the tax bills and distributing the proceeds, mainly has blamed Tyler and Preckwinkle for her office’s struggles doing that job. Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi largely has blamed Tyler for Chicago property assessments that were delivered late in 2025. Preckwinkle’s office has said that Pappas is responsible for the tax distributions to the local governments.
We’re at a point in this saga — we’re actually well past that point — where the lack of accountability and attempts to shift the blame are unacceptable. When everyone is theoretically accountable, no one is.
We’ve seen much drama in Chicago in the past few years around Mayor Brandon Johnson and the city’s inspector general, Deborah Witzburg, who’s leaving that office next year. That’s due in no small part to Witzburg’s aggressive investigation of some of the practices of city government.
Cook County has its own inspector general, too. The current holder of that post is Tirrell J. Paxton; he’s held the job for a little over a year, succeeding longtime county IG Pat Blanchard, who retired a few years ago.
Now is the time for Cook County’s IG to take on its own high-profile mission, as Chicago’s IG office has done in recent years. We need the equivalent of a forensic accounting of all the various points in the process at which Tyler went wrong and which county officials were responsible for overseeing the vendor at those points. In short, we need the full story — in all its gory details.
We spoke to Paxton and asked whether his office is conducting such a probe. He told us he’s restricted from confirming or denying.
Fair enough. We understand how such things work.
But if Paxton’s office isn’t on the case, they need to get on it now.
Essentially, Cook County taxpayers have been badly abused by the clear mismanagement exhibited in this project to date. Beyond the tens of million in financing and similar costs being paid simply to keep schools open over the past several months, the county has authorized more than $167 million over the last decade for the balky technology overhaul, including more than $85 million to Tyler itself and tens of millions more to consultants to help oversee Tyler and maintain the county’s old computer system in the meantime.
Cook County residents deserve to know how we got here. If the conclusions from auditors who have the power and expertise to get to the truth harm the reputations and future political prospects of current officeholders, so be it.
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