Pick a home, Mr. Flessner — Chicago or Naperville

Mayor Lori Lightfoot fired a veteran City Hall spokesman last week, accusing him of spreading “disinformation,” according to a report in Monday’s Politico Illinois Playbook.

Exactly what was that disinformation?

Sources say that the spokesman, Bill McCaffrey, had complained that the top attorney for the city, Corporation Counsel Mark Flessner, was spending a lot of time at a home he owns in Naperville, not Chicago. By ordinance, city employees must live in the city.

Then, on Monday afternoon, a Chicago Sun-Times report raised fresh questions about whether this disinformation might be true. The story revealed that Flessner improperly claimed two primary residences at once, which allowed him to get a tax break on both homes. In our view, that raises the legitimate question of where he really resides.

As Tom Schuba and Fran Spielman reported, records show that Flessner claimed the state’s general homestead exemption on both his Naperville house and his Chicago condo. This saved him $401.23 in taxes in 2017 and $395.04 the next year on the Naperville house. It saved him another $726.60 in 2017 and $678.60 the next year on the Chicago condo.

On Monday afternoon, the mayor’s office — roughly 20 minutes after the Sun-Times posted its story about Flessner’s dual homestead exemptions — acknowledged Flessner had made a mistake. A Lightfoot spokeswoman said Flessner would pay roughly $2,500 in back taxes dating to 2015 — presumably on the Naperville home.

Violations of the residency requirement for city workers are no small matter in Chicago, especially with respect to those top appointed officials who earn the biggest paychecks. Thousands of police officers and public school teachers are required to live in the city as a condition of employment, and it sets a poor example when a top aide to the mayor has gone years claiming his primary residence is in two different places.

The question, though, is how residency is defined. A driver’s license and voter’s card can be proof of an employee’s primary residence, but the best indicator is where he or she files for a homestead exemption.

By state law, the exemption can be claimed on only one residence, and it must be the “principal dwelling place.”

Or, to sum up:

• Flessner violated state law — and ducked higher taxes — by claiming the exemption on two homes at once.
• Whether McCaffrey, who was the law department spokesman, was spreading disinformation about Flessner remains an open question. It’s entirely possible Flessner has been living in Chicago since getting hired as the city’s top lawyer in May.

Regardless, McCaffrey got fired over this?

Maybe there’s more to it. We wish we knew. The mayor implied as much on Monday, saying she said she had “plenty of information” to fire McCaffrey “for cause.”

We can only hope there are better grounds that what we’ve heard so far.

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