Fritz Kaegi

Candidate Q&A

Why are you running? 

I’m running for Assessor because homeowners are getting screwed by special interests and corporate tax cuts, and we need someone in this office who will advocate for Cook County families instead of their donors. Before I was elected Assessor in 2018, the office was notorious for pay-to-play corruption and homeowners were paying the price. We cleaned that up with strong ethics reforms, better data and models, and more transparency, making the system fairer and saving middle-class homeowners $2 billion in the process.

But parts of the system of still broken, with the Board of Review undercutting our work with excessive tax breaks for the highest-value commercial properties in the county, including hotels, data centers, industrial sites, and mixed-use developments in the Loop. I’m running to make these big commercial properties pay their fair share, and to protect families from property tax spikes with more tax relief. I helped develop a roadmap of reforms with other county leaders — including the Board of Review — to do just that, and I’m the only candidate in the race who supports implementing it. I am also leading the fight for the “circuit breaker” in Springfield, which would protect homeowners when taxes spike over 25%. 

Families in Cook County need the system to work for them, not big developers or their property tax appeal attorneys who make millions from tax cuts they don’t deserve. 

What skills or experience do you have that make you particularly suited to this position?

Before becoming Assessor in 2018, I spent my career valuing assets as a financial manager. I spent 13 years at Columbia Wanger Asset Management, helping working families save for retirement. The job was about helping regular people build financial security. But during the Great Recession, I watched friends lose their homes. People who had done “everything right” suddenly couldn’t afford the neighborhoods where they’d raised their kids.

What made it worse was realizing Cook County’s property tax system was part of the problem. Wealthy developers were gaming the appeals process to secure massive tax breaks, while middle-class homeowners were stuck paying the difference. The whole thing was rigged.

That’s what drove me to run in 2018. I knew we could fix this by making big corporations and luxury properties pay what they actually should, so working families aren’t carrying an unfair burden. We’ve made real progress, but the fight isn’t over. The Board of Review is still handing out excessive tax breaks to commercial properties. Homeowners need someone who won’t back down.

What does this office do well, and what needs fixing?  

A recent study from the University of Chicago showed that we made assessments fairer and have eliminated most of the regressivity that had cost homeowners billions. People who own more modestly priced homes are now paying less in property taxes because the owners of mansions and other high-value homes are finally paying their fair share. This problem existed for years before I became Assessor. We are also seeing fewer appeals than ever before, a testament to getting assessments right.

Our office has won national and international awards for transparency — the first ever for the CCAO. We put all of our data and models online for everyone to see, and we upgraded our technology back in 2021 to make it all possible. 

We also expanded outreach with a dedicated department, additional staff, and more events. We held 240 outreach events in 2025, a record for our office, including over 70 Spanish language events.

We’ve also worked with affordable housing advocates and legislators to pass the Affordable Housing Special Assessment Program in Springfield a few years ago. This program, administered by my office, helped create 15,000+ new affordable housing units at no cost to taxpayers. 

To continue improving assessment accuracy, we are advocating for access to more comprehensive federal housing data on construction and building permits. To build confidence in the property tax system, our office sees annual reassessments as an important goal that will reduce appeals over time and make assessments more predictable.

What is the most pressing issue facing your constituents and how do you plan on addressing it? 

The most important issue is rising property taxes, including the recent property tax spike on the South and West Sides. The property tax spike is real, unfair, and it is disproportionately harming Black and Latino families. The spike is a direct result of the Board of Review giving out excessive commercial appeals (independent studies and the Cook County Treasurer agree that these reductions are excessive), which shifted half a billion dollars of the tax burden onto homeowners. I’m working to address this and lower costs for homeowners by closing the commercial assessment gap between my office and the Board of Review. The County’s property tax working group laid out a clear roadmap for improving the accuracy of commercial appeal results at the Board of Review. We wholeheartedly embrace these recommendations and have already begun to implement them in collaboration with the Board of Review. I’m also working to champion “circuit breaker” legislation in Springfield — like 29 other states have — that prevents property taxes from spiking. 

Is there a major policy initiative or financial issue you will look to tackle in the next year? 

I am pursuing three legislative initiatives to lower costs for homeowners this year: 
During the 2024 veto session, I worked with the Illinois General Assembly to successfully pass legislation that expands property tax relief for senior homeowners in Cook County by raising the income eligibility threshold for the Senior Freeze homestead exemption. Now, I am working with legislators to pass HB 2536 that would allow auto-renewal of the senior freeze exemption, which will ensure seniors on fixed incomes do not need to remember to file paperwork every year and worry that their taxes will go up unnecessarily.

HB 1829 improves the accuracy of property tax assessments for large, income-producing commercial properties by updating basic physical description property data. Inaccurate or outdated data leads to assessment errors, costly appeals, and unfair tax burdens. By ensuring assessments are based on current, reliable information, the bill makes property tax bills more accurate and predictable. This is a practice common in many other jurisdictions.

HB 3808 establishes a targeted property tax relief program in the form of a “circuit breaker” for homeowners who experience taxes for anyone whose bill increases more than 25% in a single year. A circuit breaker is a property tax relief program that works like an electrical circuit breaker: when taxes rise beyond an affordable level relative to a homeowner’s income or past bills, the program “trips” and provides relief. Circuit breakers are designed to protect homeowners from sudden tax shocks and are already used in 29 states.

If you are elected, what would the end of a successful four-year term look like for you?    

By the end of a four-year term, property taxes should be lower for homeowners — including families on the South and West Sides — because big commercial properties will be paying their fair share. In four years, my office will have fully implemented the County’s list of recommendations to close the commercial property valuation gap. We will have passed and implemented the property tax relief bill, delivering meaningful tax relief to hundreds of thousands of Cook County homeowners. We will have modernized all the characteristics data for 1.9 million residential and commercial properties - an accomplishment that my predecessors avoided for decades. Finally, we will have fully staffed the office to ensure timely tax bills, fair and efficient appeals, and transparency for taxpayers.

What specific steps would you take to ensure your office is accessible and responsive?

I’m extremely proud of my office’s increased outreach and community engagement programs. We’ve expanded outreach to seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities so more homeowners know about the property tax relief they qualify for, and we’ve held more than 200 outreach events each of the past 3 years. We’ve also invested in remodeling our south suburban branch offices to improve public service. We have also moved more services online so that families do not have to travel to the Loop to access our services — this was especially helpful for our Latino and immigrant families when ICE was terrorizing Chicago during Operation Midway Blitz. In the next year, we will launch a new integrated customer service system to bring together all department activity with the public.