Ronald Reagan once said, “Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”  When Reagan said that, he must have been thinking about Cook County government.

 

All appetite. No responsibility.

 

Take the current Cook County Board of Review. In 2010, the Board of Review had a budget of $10 million. Every year, the incumbent commissioners at the Board of Review hear appeals from homeowners – currently 380,000 - contesting their excessive property tax bills. They are the last resort of the hardworking taxpayer to get a reduced assessment on their property and to pay lower taxes.

 

But, after all these years, the process is clumsy, cumbersome, and expensive. If a private company operated like the Cook County Board of Review, it would never survive financially. In a private corporation, the company’s Board of Directors would vote out those responsible for maintaining a system fraught with waste, fraud, and inefficiency. But, in Cook County, taxpayers are called upon again and again to subsidize an inefficient government bureaucracy that fails to their needs.

 

In my own company, new technologies are essential to streamline our business process. Security is my business and technology is key to that. At Morrison Security, we are constantly acquiring and implementing new products that help us communicate quickly, less expensively, and with a mind to reducing staff resources and travel time. But that is not the way Cook County government works.

 

Today, in order to appeal your property taxes, you either need to be physically present at the hearing or you waive your right to be present. In today’s world, inexpensive virtual technologies are readily available. Skyping and even free teleconferencing systems could easily be implemented at the Cook County Board of Review.

 

By implementing these technologies, we could reduce or eliminate the need for taxpayers to attend a physical hearing. This would eliminate day-to-day staff at the Board of Review. We could eliminate the homeowner’s costs of taking off a day of work, fees, and travel expenses and save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 

Rather than cut essential programs, Cook County government needs more people who understand real world business operations and have a proven track record in implementing them. My program would mirror the use of teleconferencing that has been the norm at unemployment hearings before the Illinois Department of Employment Security. The Illinois Department of Employment Security has primarily conducted hearings via telephone for the last eighteen years. Why not the Cook County Board of Review? This is just one simple solution to an out-of-control problem.

 

We need to implement common business sense and fairness at the Cook County Board of Review. If elected commissioner, I will implement an entirely new program at the Board of Review that will ensure fair and uniform property taxes.

 

Just recently, the Cook County Board of Review finally allowed online filing for appeals of property tax assessments for residents. Commercial property owners must still file their requests at the downtown office of the Board of Review or at five satellite offices.

With a paperless electronic system, we could eliminate these satellite offices and, instead of having Board employees shuffle papers, move those personnel to more productive positions.

 

 The electronic system needs to be improved so that taxpayers can submit any file type of document and photograph so that we can move to a completely paperless system. We need to simplify a difficult process so that people receive the reduced assessments they are entitled to. 

 

With a completely paperless electronic system, we can give taxpayers a fighting chance for fairness and equity. It is time that Cook County government move from the Stone Age into the modern age and inexpensive technologies that help taxpayers fight their excessive assessments is one step in a positive direction.