IRS hit Cook County judge with a lien for $114,158 in unpaid income taxes

Six months ago, the IRS filed a lien against a Cook County judge and her husband, seeking to collect income taxes dating to 2018, the year she was reelected.

The unpaid taxes for Circuit Judge Maura Slattery Boyle and her husband William Boyle topped $114,158 — about half of the yearly salary Illinois taxpayers pay her — according to the lien the IRS filed Aug. 9 with the Cook County clerk’s office.

It’s unclear why they owed the taxes from 2018 through 2021. The IRS won’t discuss liens.

Slattery Boyle, meanwhile, won’t say why she and her husband owed the money, whether it’s related to her salary, her husband’s appraisal business or three businesses that, according to economic interest statements she has filed with the Illinois secretary of state’s office, she has owned for several years.

“All issues pertaining to this have been resolved,” Slattery Boyle said in an email to the Chicago Sun-Times, declining to answer other questions about the debt. In another email, Slattery Boyle said the past-due taxes have been paid.

The county clerk’s office hasn’t recorded any documents, though, showing that the IRS has released the tax lien.

The tax problems with the IRS mark the latest legal troubles for Slattery Boyle, who was 33 when she was elected as the only candidate who sought to fill a vacant judicial seat in 2000 with the help of Cook County Commissioner John Daley, her neighbor. Her current six-year term as a judge ends in December. She won’t say whether she will seek another term.

During her years on the bench, Slattery Boyle has been named in four lawsuits over two properties she owns — a condo she and her brother inherited in the Ford City Condominium complex in the West Lawn neighborhood, and a commercial building she and her husband own in Bridgeport that’s across the street from the Ramova Theater and the Daley Insurance Brokerage, which belongs to John Daley.

The city of Chicago filed three of those suits over building code violations at both properties, and a bank sued the judge and her husband, saying they were behind on a mortgage.

Two of those lawsuits are listed on ethics statements Slattery Boyle has filed with the Illinois Supreme Court clerk’s office. She has yet to disclose the tax lien and two other lawsuits — all filed within the last seven months.

Slattery Boyle is assigned to the Cook County court system’s law division and presides over cases involving lawsuits.

Last September, City Hall served a lawsuit on Slattery Boyle and everyone else who owns a unit in the Ford City Condominium complex. She and her brother, Patrick Slattery, inherited their late grandmother’s condominium at the complex.

The city’s law department is asking a Cook County judge to order the deconversion of the 11-building complex’s 319 condos into apartments so that a developer would be able to buy and rehabilitate the complex, which has a history of code violations going back several years.

Court records describe sewage leaking into crumbling walls at the complex, leaking roofs, roaches, rats and an unpaid water bill that tops $1 million.

It’s the second time City Hall has filed a lawsuit over the property that names Slattery Boyle. Last summer, the city sued in federal court, asking a bankruptcy judge to deconvert the condos. A federal judge dismissed the case, saying the case belonged in Cook County court.

The condominium association has filed for bankruptcy, saying the property has been mismanaged for years by its former board and management company.

Pat Nabong / Sun-Times

The bankruptcy court filings say assessment payments for Slattery Boyle and her brother’s condominium have been delinquent, which Slattery Boyle said isn’t true.

“There is an error which the management company has acknowledged about the assessment for parking,” Slattery Boyle said. “We are waiting for the company to remedy this situation.”

Slattery Boyle won’t say whether she and her brother have a tenant living in the condo.

“We attempted to sell the property, but the sale was halted once we were made aware of the lien initiated by the city of Chicago,” Slattery Boyle said.

Slattery Boyle was in her first term on the bench when her brother was convicted of mail fraud in 2006, along with three others, for running a scheme to fix test scores so political workers could get city jobs under Mayor Richard M. Daley, in violation of a federal court order. He was sent to prison for 27 months.

A dozen years ago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration sued Slattery Boyle and her husband, accusing them of violating the city’s unsafe buildings ordinance and obtaining a court order to demolish their commercial building at 3517 S. Halsted St.

Amid that court fight, North Community Bank sued the couple in 2014, saying they were behind on the mortgage. They refinanced the property, and the city dropped its efforts to demolish the building.

Slattery Boyle and her husband paid $135,000 for the property in 2003, buying it from an entity whose members included then-Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew, Peter Q. Thompson, county records show.

Thompson’s brother Patrick Daley Thompson — the future Chicago City Council member who was convicted in 2022 of income tax fraud and lying to authorities in an investigation of Bridgeport’s failed Washington Federal Bank for Savings — prepared the deed. When he was elected to a seat on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago board in 2012, Slattery Boyle swore him in.

The judge won’t talk about the city’s past claims that she and her husband had left that building “vacant and open” except to say: “We are not in foreclosure, nor is there any case involving the building. We refinanced the building, and all debts or actions ceased at that time.”