Caroline Hurley

The Cook County assessor cut values based on jobs he thought neighborhoods would lose due to the pandemic. It was a wild miscalculation that worked out well for some, including Mayor Lori Lightfoot, not so well for residents of a poor South Side neighborhood.

Other homeowners were given disabled veteran tax breaks — which could erase their property tax bills for life — even though they didn’t apply and weren’t vets, the Sun-Times found.

So some get big tax breaks despite being ineligible. The Cook County assessor says he’s following the policy on the disabled vets property tax exemption his predecessor set.

As disabled vets, Sen. Tammy Duckworth and former Ald. James Balcer are among those with tax bills of $0. Income isn’t a factor in getting the tax break for disabled vets. In some states, it is.

Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi has slashed their property tax breaks and is going after seven of them for $371,000 in back taxes he says they should have paid.

Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi admits his office made numerous errors managing a program that shifted $250 million last year in taxes from eligible seniors onto everyone else.

A single Chicago ZIP code renowned as a lure for tourists and shoppers accounted for the state’s most dramatic plunge in sales tax collections, a Sun-Times analysis shows.

It might not have been forever, but for those of us having to shovel again and again for weeks, it felt like it at times: 25 days, from Jan. 31 through Feb. 24.

A pilot program quietly launched in Belmont Cragin last weekend is expected to be expanded to other West Side and South Side communities hit hard by the virus.