Cook County’s watchdog dinged a member of the county Board of Review Tuesday for leaking confidential Chicago Bears property tax appeal information about the Arlington Heights racetrack the team purchased.
County Inspector General Tirrell Paxton’s report did not name any officials. But the facts of the case match allegations in a whistleblower lawsuit filed against Board of Review Commissioner Samantha Steele this summer, dealing with the wrangling between local school districts and the Bears, who bought the former Arlington racetrack property and set their sights on building a new stadium there. The team has since focused on staying on Chicago’s lakefront, though officials have said the suburban location remains a possibility.
The IG’s finding does not carry a penalty, only a recommendation that Steele take ethics training for violating the board’s ethics policy and the state’s property tax code by leaking confidential information about the pending Bears’ appeal of their property assessment and exhibiting bias against the team in comments to the media.
Steele declined to comment Tuesday.
The IG investigation found a BOR official “disclosed to the media confidential information” about two pending appeals — a violation of the board’s ethics policy around maintaining confidentiality — and “made public statements indicating bias toward an appellant,” a violation of the duty of impartiality in the state’s property tax code.
An internal spat over the Bears’ property tax appeal at the county Board of Review previously spurred a lawsuit from former Steele employee Frank Calabrese, who alleged Steele leaked the board’s decision about the valuation of the racetrack property before a final vote was taken. That suit is still pending.
The three-member Board of Review is a quasi-judicial body that hears appeals to property valuations. Property owners take cases to the board in the hopes of having their assessments — and property tax bills — knocked down. The Bears, who bought the Arlington Heights property in 2023, had been in negotiations with local school districts about how much they should pay in property taxes for the site when their case came before the board.
Ahead of that board meeting, Steele “made a comment to a media source indicating that they believed the valuation” of the racecourse “correlated to the purchase price paid,” the IG’s report said, even though an appeal was likely to come to the board. The Bears argued the assessment should be significantly lower than the sale price.
Steele did tell the Tribune in the summer of 2023 that the team had “create(d) the market” when it bought the site. The IG said the comments indicated Steele believed the valuation correctly correlated to the purchase price, suggesting Steele was inclined to hold the Bears to “an artificially high value.”
The IG report, however, misattributed a statement to Steele that the facts backing up the assessment “speak for themselves.” That quote came from an assessor spokesman, not Steele.
That IG alleged the confidential information leaks included an appraisal amount from a property tax intervenor that were not public, details about board deliberations as well as a preliminary agreement about a valuation between the three members of the board during its decision-making process.
The Board of Review ultimately set the site’s valuation at $125 million. While it was smaller than the $197 million the team paid for the site, the Bears long claimed it was not worth that much. They brought their case to the state’s Property Tax Appeal Board in April, asking for a refund of $7.2 million from local taxing bodies.
Three school districts intervened in the case, which is still pending.
