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BYLINE: By Tim Novak HIGHLIGHT: Both helped get assessments lowered on their own homes. A Cook County agency that can give tax breaks to property owners fired two employees Tuesday because of their "misconduct" in obtaining tax cuts on their own homes, a county official said. Paul Brust and Margaret Marro were fired two days after the Chicago Sun-Times disclosed how they got tax breaks by concealing their interests in the cases. Brust personally approved the cut on his wife's home, saving her $952 in taxes this year. The application was filed under the name of his wife's late husband, Patrick W. Kissane ? who died 25 years ago. "We've asked the state's attorney to look at these two files...to see if there was anything criminally wrong," said Joseph Berrios, one of three commissioners on the Cook County Board of Review, which has the power to cut property assessments, resulting in lower property taxes. Brust, 64, had been a board employee for about five years. He worked for Berrios as an analyst and was authorized to sign Berrios' name when he decided to reduce a home's assessment ? as he did with his wife's home in Chicago's Edison Park neighborhood, a home he shares with her. Marro, who worked at the board for nearly 20 years, bought a home in Chicago's Norwood Park neighborhood last spring. A week later, she used the previous owner's name to apply for an assessment cut and claimed the home hadn't been sold in more than three years. The board cut the assessment, a decision that let Marro pocket $1,000 of the tax money she got from the previous owner. "She did lie to us," Berrios said. "I can't have employees lying to us, period." Berrios said the board will review its files to make sure other employees haven't helped cut the assessments on their own homes and will "put some rules and regulations together to prevent this from happening in the future." CFAT News Source news@fairtaxes.net County Board of Review Fires 2 Workers |
