Concerned about ‘public trust,’ Preckwinkle seeks to air out county land bank deal

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle on Wednesday requested an independent review of a county agency tasked with helping get vacant homes back on the market after the head of the agency admitted a sale involving a building owned by a top aide to 34th Ward Ald. Carrie Austin never should have been allowed.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported on the insider deal involving the Cook County Land Bank Authority and a building that Austin’s chief of staff Chester Wilson Jr. owned at 103rd Street and Corliss Avenue.

“Public trust in the Land Bank’s transactions and mission is critical to its continued success,” Preckwinkle said in a statement. “Consequentially, Commissioner Bridget Gainer and I have requested an independent review to be conducted of the Land Bank’s processes and procedures to evaluate its handling of the Corliss Ave. property and to provide recommendations to ensure future transactions are not in question.”

Since the land bank is an independent county agency, Preckwinkle can only make the request. But Gainer serves as the land bank’s chairwoman, essentially green-lighting the review.

Preckwinkle’s office will cover the costs, her spokesman said.

Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, who has raised her own questions about the land bank, applauded Preckwinkle’s move.

Rich Hein/Sun-Times

“She’s no dummy,” Pappas said of the board president. “She smells a rat, and she’s going to deal with it. She’ll figure it out.”

The Sun-Times reported Monday that Austin’s chief of staff owned the Corliss Avenue building, devastated by fire and mired in housing court for building code violations.

Wilson stopped paying property taxes on the building in 2008 and racked up a debt of more than $200,000 in taxes and interest — a debt any potential buyer would have to pay.

Wilson made a deal with the Cook County Land Bank Authority, a program formed in 2013 that wipes out delinquent property taxes on vacant or abandoned properties and works with developers to get the properties back on the market and the tax rolls.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

In July of 2017, Wilson hired the county agency to change the locks on the building and then agreed to surrender the property to them. The county wiped out all of the taxes he didn’t pay and agreed to turn over the property to Lisa Livingston, a daycare operator who’d been a Wilson business partner — a fact they failed to mention to the land bank.

That deal should never have been allowed to happen because of Livingston and Wilson’s relationship, Robert Rose, the executive director of the land bank has told the Sun-Times.

Rose had called the sale “an absolute aberration” for the land bank.

On Wednesday, he welcomed the call for scrutiny.

“We look forward to the review and the ability to show the potential of all neighborhoods for redevelopment,” Rose said in a statement.

Lauren FitzPatrick / Sun-Times

The decision for a review is just the latest domino to fall involving the land bank.

Pappas penned a letter Monday to Rose taking him to task for the “erratic acquisition” of properties up for grabs for the 2019 scavenger sale.

The county treasurer called for the Board of Commissioners to audit the group’s activities.

“This is a turd that is starting to stink,” Pappas said. “The buying and selling of this stuff — it stinks.”

Over the past three scavenger sales, where property taxes on properties with three or more delinquent tax years are put up for sale, the land bank has acquired 27,120 out of 96,284 properties for nothing since they have a no-cash bid power.

In her letter, Pappas says her office’s recent scavenger sale, was “made a shambles of” by the land bank for its “erratic acquisitions” of properties on the sale list and use of its no-cash bid power to hold properties in limbo.

And they don’t always keep the properties they get, sometimes returning them to the county, creating a headache for Pappas’ office.

Rose said the land bank has nothing but “praise and respect” for Pappas and her staff.

Cook County

The 2015 scavenger sale was the first for the land bank, which was established in 2013, so it went through a bit of a learning curve, Rose said. But return rates should be lower and the land bank is in the process of getting the deeds for the other properties, so it can eventually put them up for developers to claim.

“We’re all looking at the same mission, which is how we can get families and businesses back into vacant homes and businesses,” Rose said.

“We were established to solve this proble, and we’re working hard to repair the harm done during the foreclosure crisis, and the scavenger sale is a big part of that effort.”

For Pappas, enough is enough.

“We all understand the Land Bank’s mission of turning distressed homes into livable ones. But hollowing out the scavenger sale with minimal returns is not the way to do it,” Pappas’ letter reads in part.