A group of Black elected officials and pastors backed Pat Hynes’ bid for Cook County assessor on Thursday, highlighting still-fresh anger over home assessments that skyrocketed on Chicago’s South and West sides under Assessor Fritz Kaegi.
Among those who joined Hynes at a news conference was a major defection: former Congressman Bobby Rush, who previously endorsed Kaegi over then-Cook County Democratic Party chair and incumbent Assessor Joe Berrios.
Back in 2018, Rush said the assessment process under Berrios “unfairly penalizes black and brown communities. Some homeowners in the 1st District are losing their homes because of a system that is designed to fail them.”
On Thursday, Rush joined several aldermen who felt betrayed by Kaegi after their neighborhoods saw massive hikes to assessments and property tax bills last year, triggering fears that homeowners would lose their properties because they can’t keep up with the payments.
South Side Alds. Stephanie Coleman and David Moore and West Side Alds. Red Burnett and Jason Ervin also joined Hynes at IBEW Local 134, pledging to turn out their communities to vote.
The assessment increases were a “breaking point” for many elected officials, Hynes told the Tribune. A home “is the most personal and emotional asset that anyone will ever own… and as Assessor, Kaegi is flat-out pushing people out of their homes.”
Former U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush attends an event on July 26, 2025, in Chicago. Rush previously endorsed Kaegi. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
“He’s not our friend anymore,” Rush said of Kaegi. “He’s disappointed us now for two terms. We’ve seen our property taxes go up and up and up. It seems like this guy believes that the sky’s the limit.”
Median bills for Chicago homeowners jumped by a record 16.7% last year, fueled by a drop in big commercial building values and sharp increases to sales prices in neighborhoods like Englewood, West Garfield Park and North Lawndale.
In an emailed statement, Kaegi said “These tax increases are real, they aren’t fair, and they’re disproportionately hitting Black communities, so I share the frustration folks are voicing. That’s why I’ve been sounding the alarm on the root cause of these increases, and that’s the enormous tax cuts given out to big corporations and commercial properties in the Loop. I’m committed to making these companies pay their fair share, I’m working every day to get more tax relief to the families who need it, and it’s my hope that these are reforms we can all unite behind.”
Kaegi’s attempts to keep commercial assessments higher have been stymied by successful appeals at the county’s Board of Review. Without those breaks for downtown property owners, bills would have gone down or stayed flat in two-thirds of Black and Latino neighborhoods in Chicago, according to Kaegi.
“It is a fact that cuts to commercial assessments shifted half a billion dollars of levies onto homeowners, which translates to about $700 per Chicago homeowner, which constitutes almost the entire increase that was felt in neighborhoods like Englewood, Austin and South Shore,” he told the Tribune’s editorial board late last month.
Cities, schools, libraries and other public agencies are responsible for levying taxes. The assessor’s job is to value property to determine how much each property owner pays. Kaegi said he’s worked to undo assessment problems like the undervaluation of expensive homes and trophy business buildings and the overvaluation of homes in lower income neighborhoods.
But Rush echoed criticism of other elected officials, saying Kaegi had missed the mark and didn’t take accountability for mistakes the office had made.
“He failed to deliver on his promises,” Rush said. “And to add insult to injury, he keeps blaming everybody else when the problem rests solely with him because he is incompetent and he don’t care. And he will lie and he will make excuses. I tell you, we are sick and tired of the excuse-making and the finger-pointing.”
Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi answers questions during the Cook County Democratic Party primary slating on July 17, 2025, in Chicago. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Kaegi’s campaign noted his office held outreach events across the South Side and West Side and processed 1.5 million property tax exemptions for homeowners last year. They also touted endorsements from other Black leaders across the county, including Rep. Danny Davis, Rep. Robin Kelly, Rep. Jonathan Jackson, and several members of the Chicago City Council, including Maria Hadden, Anthony Beale, Chris Taliaferro.
Hynes, a former field inspector in the Assessor’s office, has highlighted his efforts to correct Kaegi’s failures to catch new construction as a township Assessor in Lyons. One of his priorities as assessor, he said, would be to update property records across the office to ensure assessments reflect property conditions on the ground.
A 2024 Tribune and Illinois Answers Project investigation found Kaegi had failed to capture new construction or significant renovations at 620 properties during the 2023 tax year. As of last March, Kaegi’s office had fixed the vast majority, adding $489 million in taxable property value back to the county’s rolls, and committed to other reforms to ensure they were catching new builds and teardowns, but downplayed the missing properties as a major problem. Kaegi told the editorial board that adding those properties back had made a dollar or two difference on bills.
The office now has 40 people on the data integrity team that includes field inspectors, plus four openings. At its peak under Berrios, there were 38 budgeted spots.
Kaegi has said a Hynes win would represent a step backward on ethics and accountability measures he’d delivered over his two terms, pointing to roughly $97,000 in donations Hynes has accepted from property tax attorneys as a major conflict of interest.
Thursday’s endorsements come on top of the endorsement for Hynes by the Cook County Democratic Party this summer and the Chicago Federation of Labor, the umbrella organization for Chicagoland unions.
