Hey, Look!

Actual investigative journalism!

• Two months after a Chicago Sun-Times Watchdogs investigation revealed that Mayor Brandon Johnson’s city budget director Annette Guzman had taken illegal property tax breaks for five years, she’s paying back the rest of what she should have paid.

  The Sun-Times reported in May that Guzman had taken property tax breaks she wasn’t entitled to for the past five years, saving her $3,432 in taxes on a South Loop condo she leases to tenants.

  Annette Guzman got the approval she needed to claim those tax breaks from Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, her former boss.

  After being asked why he’d approved those tax breaks, Kaegi decided Guzman should pay up for only a portion of what she’d failed to pay: $2,071.29, covering only the past three years, out of the five years for which she’d gotten the illegal tax breaks.

  Following the Sun-Times report, records show, Guzman made good on the rest of the property taxes that she should have been paying, the remaining two years. She sent Kaegi two checks on April 3 to cover the additional $1,360.80 she should have paid for 2020 and 2021.

Remember, this is Conehead's BUDGET DIRECTOR. The person in charge of determining how much money Conehead needs to run the city and how to gather that money from taxpayers - all while cheating taxpayers out of her portion of the tax burden. 

This is how you can tell that Conehead probably doesn't have the backing of the Machine. At least not to the extent that they'd bury this story under normal circumstances.