Cook County

-By Warner Todd Huston

A few weeks ago Chicago Magazine published a story that revealed what sure looks like an influence peddling scandal perpetrated by Democrat Cook County Board of Review member Joseph Berrios. The story is filled with the maddeningly typical Chicago corruption. It also seems to implicate his other two fellow board members, Brendan Houlihan and Larry Rogers, Jr — both Democrats. To date Houlihan has yet to answer to these charges.

The Cook County Board of Review is the office responsible for handling property tax complaints and is responsible for lowering the tax rate if a property merits a reduction. As it happens Berrios, a Board of Review member since 1988, has been rather free with tax reductions for campaign contributors. He also seems to have ignored or skirted multiple rules and regulations by meeting with contributors behind closed doors and illegally filing requests for review. It appears that Berrios initiated a pay to play operation where commercial property owners got reductions in property taxes for campaign contributions to his campaign.

One Berrios associate in particular had some very favorable tax reductions given to him and his clients. Paul Froehlich and a political associate who once worked for Berrios found the Board of Review quite amenable to reductions for several Schaumburg properties the pair represented.

Now a property cannot have its taxes reduced unless at least one other commissioner agrees to the reduction. Meetings arranging the reductions, though, appear to be little else but a rubber stamp affair of the member’s recommendations. It is rare that any of the other two board members ever deny a fellow their recommendation. Again, all three board members are Democrats.

After the Chicago Magazine story at least four property tax reductions were suddenly reversed by the board, reductions that were called into question by the story. Fellow board member Brendan Houlihan, who represents suburban Cook County, attempted to distance himself from the corruption by claiming that he had investigated himself and all was well with the world.

Houlihan claimed that he had conducted an “internal investigation” and his findings had been turned over to the state’s attorney’s office that is investigating the scandal. He refused any further comment because of the ongoing investigation of possible criminal activity.

Houlihan has quite a few questions to answer to and just sitting back and saying “no comment” is not good enough as he presents himself for reelection by the very people he may have helped defraud of tax receipts to help Berrios gain campaign donations.

Here is what Houlihan is accused of doing: The Board of Review frequently goes out among private citizens with seminars and similar events and at these events tax reduction requests are accepted from the general public. The law states that regular homeowners are allowed to file reductions in person but commercial property owners must file via an attorney. The accusation is that Houlihan was allowing the cases from Berrios’s pals to be added illegally to private homeowner cases, all of which were then rubber stamped by the board with the reductions passed on illicitly to Berrios’s commercial property campaign supporters.

Worse, Houlihan claims that he was unaware that Joe Berrios was running one of these citizen outreach seminars right in Houlihan’s own suburban Cook district. It was at this outreach session that Berrios slipped in the commercial cases among the private citizen’s requests.

There are several vexing questions that Houlihan has yet to answer to in this scandal. Chief of which is what did Houlihan know and when did he know it?

• Was Houlihan personally aware that these commercial cases were slipped in with the private homeowner’s tax reduction requests?
• If Commissioner Houlihan wasn’t aware of it is one of his staffers complicit with the illegal activity?
• Did Houlihan review and approve of the tax reductions for Berrios’s pals?
• If not, isn’t that a dereliction of his duty as a board member?
• Why did Houlihan not even know what was going on in his own district?

There also seem to have been three closed-door hearings by the Board of Review on this whole scandal. Despite that these violations occurred in Houlihan’s very own district transcripts show that he asked no questions during the hearings. In fact, he failed to even attend one of them.

Just what the heck does Brendan Houlihan do in his elected position on the Cook County Board of Review? He skips meetings, refuses to ask questions about a scandal perpetrated in his own district, rubber stamps illegal tax reductions, and then won’t answer to the voters for his lack of alacrity for doing his job.

I called Houlihan’s office and was granted a meeting… at first. The next day, via email, spokesman Mark Volpe told me that meeting was canceled. After a follow up phone call I was told that Houlihan had no comment on the matter.

Clearly Houlihan doesn’t feel he has to answer to the voters of suburban Cook County. Will they return him to office in November?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.

For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.