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Copyright 1999 Chicago Sun-Times October 29, 19999 SECTION: EDT; Pg. 51 LENGTH: 667 words BYLINE: Raymond R. Coffey For a start, Chairman Maureen Murphy notes in response to Thursday's column, the Cook County Board of (Tax) Review's ban on tax consultants representing property taxpayers predates by many years her 1998 election. She also says the ban on consultants appearing before the board ? obviously favored by the Illinois and Chicago bar associations and the tax lawyers who enjoy a monopoly ? "would make for a good debate" and perhaps ought to be reviewed. Murphy also says she has not erased tax consultants' names from certificates of error issued by the assessor's office as a condition for board approval of refunds for overtaxed property owners. She says she has in fact approved refunds in many cases in which the taxpayer was represented by a consultant. But also, the fact is, Murphy did propose in a letter to the assessor ? in the interest, she says, of expediting a refund for a taxpayer ? that the assessor issue a new certificate of error minus the consultant's name. The taxpayer was required to sign an affidavit that the consultant, Andrea Raila, no longer was representing him. That done, he got his $2,300 refund. There is also evidence in board files that certificates of error from the assessor are computer-coded at the board with the letter "Q" to signify cases handled by consultants. Those cases are "not even looked at" by board members, according to board employee sources, and are rejected wholesale by the board. There also is a computer code for tax lawyers who practice regularly before the board and who regularly make campaign contributions to board members, none of whom, despite their claimed "quasi-judicial" functions, are lawyers. Along with suburban Republican Murphy, who holds the rotating board chairmanship, the members are Chicago Democrats Joseph Berrios and Robert Shaw, a former alderman. When they took office last December, Murphy says, the board decided to "go with the same rules" set by the old all-Chicago two-member board. Murphy says the new wrinkle in the processing of refund certificates in cases handled by consultants came into play as the result of a question raised by Tom Jaconetty, a lawyer and longtime appointive chief deputy commissioner at the board. Jaconetty, who pretty much sets the course at the board, wondered, according to Murphy, whether allowing consultants' names to appear on certificates of error from the assessor's office might put the board in violation of its own ban. That ban traces to a reading of a 1987 state Supreme Court ruling in which, oddly, a lawyer was disbarred for his behavior, and to interpretation by the state's attorney's office, which serves as lawyer to the board. The state's attorney's office suggested that the consultants issue could be resolved by returning the certificates of error to the auditor's office and having them re-sent to the board minus the consultant's names. Murphy says she was "grappling with this nettlesome problem" when she wrote to Assessor James Houlihan requesting the the certificate rejected by the board "be forwarded from your office to the Board of Review in the taxpayer's name." She also asked that the redone certificate be forwarded to Jaconetty. The concern of the lawyers in their anti-consultants position, Murphy says, is that they think they have a closer relationship with the clients and that "if a lawyer goofs, you (a taxpayer) can come back and sue them." Be that as it may, Murphy, who campaigned as a reformer on a pledge to give taxpayers a better break, constantly encourages property owners at public meetings throughout the county to handle their own tax appeals rather than pay lawyers a large chunk of their refunds. And she makes a strong case: The board handles upward of 100,000 appeals a year. Statistics show, Murphy says, that lawyers win in 38 percent of they handle. Taxpayers have a significantly better batting average. When they go to bat for themselves, they win 62 percent of the time. CFAT News Source news@fairtaxes.net Tax Appeal Law Has Long Precedent |
