Charges Made in Cook County Board of Review Race Getting Serious

-By Warner Todd Huston

It may seem awfully early for full broadsides in the world of primary politics for anything other than the GOP presidential primary, but the race for a GOP seat on the Cook County Board of Review is already filled with charges, some of them seemingly quite serious.

Now, the Cook County Board of Review is a sort of arcane office in the first place. You go to the Board of Review if you think your property taxes are too high and you want a reassessment of that bill. Since it has a pretty singular focus having some good knowledge about the appeals process would seem like a must for any worthy candidate. One would also hope that any candidate offering himself for the board would be free of ties to corrupting influences as well, but, well, we are in Illinois, right?

Past tales of corruption with the Board are legendary, of course. This is why, not long ago, the Board was expanded from two members to three. But the question we need to contend with is just this: is incumbent GOP Board member Dan Patlak involved in any of this corruption? Challenger Republican candidate Sean Morrison has made pretty bold charges that he is involved in quid pro quo, pay-to-play corruption. He’s charged that Patlak is taking large sums of money from lawyers and in return giving them favorable reassessments.

This is a pretty hefty corruption charge, and if proven should really hurt first term Commissioner Patlak.

I am sure we are all suspicious of such things going on in Cook County offices, but a regular Joe with suspicions is a far different animal than a guy running for office voicing those opinions. If Morrison has actual proof of these charges he must bring them forth. I’d be the first to report them, too. But before we get into the high weeds of what sort of donations were received, it must be noted that donations from attorneys are completely legal.

Regardless, Morrison is making these charges pretty boldly. At a Bremen Township GOP Organization meeting, for instance, Morrison intimated that Patlak has been “shaking down” attorneys that appear before the Board of Review. In a separate op ed Morrison claimed that attorneys donating to the Board are getting favorable results in their cases — calling it a pay-to-play system he’d fight, of course.

At least one person acting as a surrogate for Morrison (perhaps a temporary one) has made a similar charge. Long-time Chicago writer Ray Hanania seemed to be sticking up for Morrison by claiming in a recent blog entry that “right-wing Republican Dan Patlak” has “taken $300,000 in donations from the lawyers who appear before the board.”

I asked Hanania about his $300,000 figure and he says it came not just from counting donations straight from attorneys to Mr. Patlak’s campaign but also money from PACs that deal in real estate issues.

As a side note, I am a bit amused that to Hanania, Patlak is a “right-wing Republican,” but meanwhile Morrison is saying Patlak is not Republican enough. Ah, political rhetoric. Ain’t it fun?

Morrison has also used this higher donation figure and may even be the main source from which Hanania got his info. For example, in recent campaign videos (see here and here) Morrison claimed that Patlak has realized $358,288 in donations from attorneys that appear before the Board.

Another broadside from Morrison is his continued claim that Patlak is demanding $5,000 donations from attorneys. This is a bit of a misconstruction, I think. Morrison gets this $5,000 figure from an invitation to a Patlak fundraiser that, like every fundraiser, has various levels of sponsorships offered for supporters to choose from. One of those is a “platinum sponsorship” ringing in at $5,000. Like I said, to have sponsorships at high dollar rates is typical of political fundraisers.

I asked Commissioner Patlak to clear up some of these donation figures for me and he passed on some numbers.

To begin with, to Morrison’s $5,000 donation claim, Patlak says the point is moot because, while he certainly had the sponsorship figure on his invitation, he’s never had anyone choose the “platinum sponsorship” option at one of his fundraisers. And looking over Commissioner Patlak’s D2s I can see some large dollar donors, such as those from conservative activist Jack Roeser and his wife. But it should be noted that neither of the Roesers are attorneys that appear before the Board of Review.

Patlak told me that in kind contributions from the Realtor’s Political Action Committee — the one Ray Hanania referred to — totaled $13,677.75 and the total of in-cash donations was $5,500. Patlak felt that of the $164,000 he raised perhaps as much as $130,000 was from attorneys. Patlak says that the $358,288 number might be all his contributions from all his fundraisers since he started running for office but there is no way that this number represents donations just from attorneys as Morrison is intimating.

Morrison is not making these charges hard to find. I am getting all this from his own website and campaign videos. On his campaign website Morrison has taken the somewhat unusual tact of writing his own op eds about what he’d do, what Patlak is doing, and what the Board is doing.

I say this is unusual (and it is a good thing… I like it a lot, I must say) because 99 out of 100 campaign websites are bland as can be. Most campaign websites have sterile “news” of where a candidate appeared, pictures of smiling faces, maybe some staid white papers here and there, but rarely do they get into the high weeds of opinions and forceful charges against the opponent(s). Morrison should be commended for laying it all out there. You can really get a feel for the man’s positions and temperament from his blog posts.

But in reading Morrison seems a bit hazy on certain aspects of the Board of Review and what he can do as a member.

One instance shows Morrison charging that the Board of Review hasn’t been fully brought into the 21st century. He praised the Board for allowing homeowners to file their appeals online, but scolded the Board for not allowing commercial property owners to file online. However, Morrison is incorrect. Commercial owners can also file online.

In another post, Morrison wrote of his breakfast meeting with some WWII Army Rangers. In that post he says the following (my bold):

I have to say it is a bit sloppy of Morrison to claim that if he is elected he will, “implement an entirely new program at the Board of Review that will ensure fair and uniform property taxes.” This strikes as overheated election rhetoric, I have to say. Sure we see this stuff from candidates all the time but let’s look at the facts in implementing any new programs at the Board of Review, shall we?

The fact is, Morrison would not be able to implement anything just on his newly elected say-so because there are two other Board members (both Democrat, by the way) that he’d have to contend with and convince to join him in the endeavor. His election might lead to a proposal of these wondrous new ideas but he has a whole county of Democrats to fight to get it done. It won’t be an elect-me-and-we-win scenario regardless.

So, it just isn’t entirely responsible to say he’ll implement these changes when in truth he will only be in a position to propose these changes. Two very different situations, that. He would be doing his voters a service to let them understand that voting him in is no lock on the great ideas he is selling them.

In any case, this race has already heated up from the Morrison camp and I doubt it will be long before Commissioner Patlak makes some formal replies to Morrison’s claims.

It all goes to show that fiery rhetoric isn’t just for presidential candidates this early in the process.

Postscript: I contacted Mr. Morrison before I posted this piece and he sent me a lengthy response to the points here. Instead of sprinkling them into this article — which would make the thing too long for most people to read and this one is already running long — I decided I am going to post a separate article with Mr. Morrison’s replies. **Update** See that post on Morrison HERE.