Posted inInvestigations

Luxury Home or Vacant Lot? Cook County Assessor Misclassifies Hundreds of Properties, Missing $444M in One Year Alone

An investigation by Illinois Answers Project and the Chicago Tribune found Assessor Fritz Kaegi’s office missed critical data from at least 620 properties in 2023, with big implications for those taxpayers.

by Alex Nitkin, A.D. Quig and Cam Rodriguez, The New York Times August 4, 2024August 28, 2024

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Luxury Home or Vacant Lot? Cook County Assessor Misclassifies Hundreds of Properties, Missing $444M in One Year Alone

by Alex Nitkin, A.D. Quig and Cam Rodriguez, The New York Times, Illinois Answers Project
August 4, 2024

<h1>Luxury Home or Vacant Lot? Cook County Assessor Misclassifies Hundreds of Properties, Missing $444M in One Year Alone</h1>
<p class="byline">by Alex Nitkin, A.D. Quig and Cam Rodriguez, The New York Times, Illinois Answers Project <br />August 4, 2024</p>
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Denise Gilmore sits on the front porch of her Humboldt Park home with granddaughters, Mylah Collins, 4, left, and Capri Douglas, 2, on June 7, 2024. (Vincent Alban/Chicago Tribune)

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Tagged: Property taxes, Government finance, Cook County Assessor

Alex NitkinGovernment Finance and Accountability Reporter

anitkin@illinoisanswers.org

Alex Nitkin is a government finance and accountability reporter conducting investigations on systemic problems and the public policies that are meant to fix them in Chicago, Cook County and Illinois government. Before joining Illinois Answers, he worked as a reporter and editor for The Daily Line covering Cook County and Chicago government. He previously worked at The Real Deal Chicago, where he covered local real estate news, and DNAinfo Chicago, where he worked as a breaking news reporter and then as a neighborhood reporter covering the city's Northwest Side. A New York native who grew up in Connecticut, Alex graduated Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism with a bachelor’s degree.

More by Alex Nitkin

A.D. Quig

ad-quig@example.com

A.D. Quig covers Cook County government, City Hall and the Obama Presidential Center. She joined the Tribune in 2022 after covering politics for Crain’s Chicago Business and The Daily Line.

More by A.D. Quig