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BYLINE: Mark Brown, Chicago Sun-Times November 27, 2001 HIGHLIGHT: Board of Review workers were just a little too close to tax deals on real estate. Paul Brust and Margaret Marro must have some serious clout. I say that because Brust and Marro are still employed by the Cook County Board of Review, the agency responsible for making sure the county assessor has correctly valued our real estate for property tax purposes. Pretty much everyone working at the Board of Review has at least a little clout. It's definitely not the kind of place where you want to walk in blind off the street and apply for a job. It's more the kind of place where you might have to make some new arrangements if, heaven forbid, your clout died, or worse yet, lost an election, or worse still, got a new girlfriend. But the reason I think that Brust and Marro have some serious clout isn't just that they work there, but that they still work there. Please forgive me for repeating myself. Maybe you saw the front-page story in the Sunday Sun-Times that has given rise to my interest in Brust and Marro's clout. The story explained the unusual circumstance under which the Board of Review approved assessment reductions for Brust's and Marro's respective homes. The reduced assessments resulted in property tax cuts for the two houses. For obvious reasons, the Board of Review has a policy discouraging employees from appealing their own or their spouse's taxes at the Board of Review. It's not a law. It doesn't even seem to be a written policy, as you might think, but it's not a big secret either. The reason is simple enough, as Board of Review Commissioner Joseph Berrios explained to our reporter, Tim Novak: "So people can't question that if you work here you have an advantage." It definitely does raise that question, especially when you realize how much discretion the board has and how arbitrary its decisions can be. Brust's case is particularly curious. Perhaps the strangest aspect is that we don't know exactly who filed the appeal for his home. It was signed in the name of Patrick W. Kissane, the former husband of Brust's wife, Dolores Kissane. We don't know who signed the appeal, but we certainly know it wasn't Patrick W. Kissane. He's been dead for 25 years. Now, it is not uncommon, and certainly not improper, for widows to continue to use the names of their late husbands on official documents. Dolores Kissane, 62, made that very point to me Monday morning during a brief chat. "Everything has been in my husband's name for years and years," she said. Actually, as the Sun-Times reported, Brust replaced Patrick Kissane on the house deed in 1996, then was removed two years later. Although Dolores is the only name on the deed now, Brust still lives there. I suppose you could argue that Brust doesn't receive any benefit from a $952 tax cut on the house in which he lives with his wife, but I would leave that argument for him to make, and he's been avoiding us. Dolores didn't want to discuss the details. "I hope this is the end of it, because we've done nothing illegal," she said. "I'm just hoping it will blow over." Berrios is apparently hoping for the same thing. He's decided that Brust deserves only a reprimand. Here's the reason it shouldn't just blow over: It was Brust himself who helped approve the tax cut on his own home, signing off on behalf of Berrios, his boss. I can see a good argument that the Board of Review employees should have the same right as anybody else to appeal their property tax assessment, as long as the agency has a procedure in place to make sure that those appeals are independently evaluated and independently decided. There's absolutely no way they should be allowed to approve their own tax cuts. Marro's case is even more complicated. In essence, however, she bought a new home in Norwood Park and appealed the taxes using th same name of the previous owner, saving herself more than $1,000 when the board of Review gave it's approval. That was the difference between what the previous owners paid her at closing for the anticipated taxes and what she actually had to pay. You probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was Brust who signed the board's approval for Marro's tax reduction too. Marro's supervisors at the board are defending her, arguing that she didn't really benefit. The previous owners, though, say Marro certainly didn't send them any of the money. That might be something that the Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine's office could help clarify. It would be good to see the state's attorney start picking up some of the slack created by the U.S. Justice Department's new emphasis on terrorism, which is bound to leave fewer federal investigators looking into allegations of public corruption. We're reviewing the matter, and we'll follow it wherever it takes us," a spokesman for the state's attorney said in reference to the newspaper's story. We'll see if that's just another way of letting it blow over. CFAT News Source news@fairtaxes.net Clout Still Goes a Long Way in Cook County |
