Cook County Board FY2027 Budget Hearings: Treasurer and Public Defender, October 30, 2026

A Cook County Board committee held a FY2027 budget hearing on October 30, 2026, taking presentations from the Treasurer's Office and the Cook County Public Defender. No agenda or minutes were available, and the transcript does not provide a meeting time range; it ends mid-way through the Public Defender's presentation. No votes or final budget actions are recorded.

Treasurer's Office FY2027 Budget

• Treasurer's Office representative David presented a $20.1 million FY2027 budget, with 97% from commercial fees and about 61 employees at the start of the fiscal year; he said a 250-employee office would cost about $68 million. The office expects to exceed its FY2026 revenue estimate by $14 million.
• David described a difficult property-tax year with three installment due dates. He said roughly 285 tax bills from 2024 remain unresolved and another 1,700 from 2025 need Tyler fixes; the office distributed more than $7 billion for the 2025 second installment to taxing districts, including $2.7 billion then hitting bank accounts, and issued more than 110,000 refund checks totaling about $313 million from mid-March to October 1.
• He disputed claims that the office was not fully cooperative on the Tyler project and said it would keep pushing implementation until defects are resolved. He cited website use of 13.6 million hits this fiscal year and 130 million since 2004, $105 million in duplicate and overpayment refunds, about $19 million in missing exemptions mainly for seniors, and about 25,000 seniors affected by freeze or exemption changes.
• He highlighted Public Act 104-0553, signed July 10 this year, which phases out private tax buying after six more tax sales; the next sale for tax year 2023 delinquencies begins December 15, and the 2024 sale is set for August. The 2025 tax bill analysis showed $19.9 billion billed, an increase of $743.8 million.
• Outreach included Black and Latino Houses Matter radio programs; more than $429 million distributed to Black communities since March 2020 and $280 million to Latino communities; a February Telemundo phone bank found over $188,000 in exemptions and refunds. The office is pursuing data science and AI, an AI phone system within three years, and a future two-coupon tax bill.

Commissioner Questions on Treasurer's Budget

• Commissioner Lowry thanked the office for interdepartmental synergy, self-funding, and Black and Latino outreach. Commissioner Vasquez thanked staff for handling Tyler-related constituent workload and said blame for the technology problems has been disproportionate.
• On metrics, Vasquez noted printing, folding, and inserting took 9 days in FY24 and FY25 and a likely lower FY26 figure of about 6 to 7 days, while the FY27 target is 14; David attributed the higher target to Tyler file issues and the outsourced print and mail vendor. Online payments were 1.1 million in FY24, 0.6 million in FY25, and targeted at 0.8 million for FY26 and FY27; David attributed the dip to the late December 2025 due date and said about 25% of on-time payments are online, with just under 1.8 million bills sent and about 780,000 paid by mortgage companies.
• FTE shifts from operations to IT and legal were described as both Tyler-related and process-improvement related, including two data analysts starting in November for finance and legal and another later for refunds. CFO Andrew Jadico said a $558,000 capital decrease reflected prior-year replacement pushed forward, reduced 2026 spending, and delayed equipment expected in 2027; he referenced a $500,000 line-item decrease.
• On certificate-of-error refunds, David said approved refunds are delayed by multiple Tyler defects and complex scenarios such as late payments, transit TIFs, abatements, and PTAB decisions. The office handles them case by case, waits for assessor certification, and sometimes finds the Tyler-generated refund amount is not what is expected. He said the office does not know the total universe of certificate-of-error refunds; the assessor certifies them and sends correspondence, and the Treasurer runs the TX600 calculation.
• David said stale-dated checks can be canceled and reissued and deceased-payee refunds can be reissued through a financial transaction rather than Tyler. On staffing, he said security and community-outreach positions were converted from full-time to part-time and a call-center analyst went from two to one, with cross-training and non-union staff shifted by need.
• On the scavenger sale, David said it has been phased out; about 38,000 certificates that would have gone to scavenger sale are held by the county and Bureau of Economic Development, and the Treasurer has no statutory role after the county takes the certificate but can advise.
• On timing, David said the next first installment, due the first business day of March, is not expected to be delayed because it is 55% of the prior year's total. He said it is too early to predict the second installment, though the assessor has pledged to finish by the end of December and the office monitors Tyler daily. He said disbursements to taxing districts are going out without delay, though data reporting to about 300 agencies remains incomplete.

Public Defender FY2027 Budget

• Cook County Public Defender Sharon Mitchell Jr. presented her sixth budget and said the FY2027 budget represents a pause in incremental progress due to the tough fiscal year. She said the office represents the vast majority of people in the criminal legal system and also handles family defense and immigration matters.
• Mitchell said the office contracted with the RAN Corporation for an office-wide workload study. Applying national standards to current caseloads produced a preliminary finding of a triple-digit shortage of attorneys on the adult criminal side; the office will conduct time and Delphi studies to build local standards and issue a final report.
• She compared public defense with the State's Attorney's Office: the public defender began 2024 with 610 fewer full-time positions, the gap grew by more than 80 positions over three budget cycles, and new county investments in the State's Attorney were more than twice those in public defense. Excluding civil practice, she said the office has about 550 FTEs and about $109 million less in funding for criminal, family defense, and juvenile justice staffing.
• Mitchell said pay disparities, collective-bargaining and employment-plan constraints, and limited lateral hiring make recruitment harder, while prosecutors have the investigative support of law enforcement agencies with combined annual spending of about $2 billion. She said dismissals and not-guilty outcomes in felony cases from 2023 through 2026 spared approximately 25,007 years of incarceration.
• She cited Cook County's largest funding and staffing gap between defense and prosecution among the seven largest county-run public defender offices and mentioned Maricopa County, Arizona, where the public defender budget is roughly $30 million higher than the prosecutor's in a smaller system. The transcript ends mid-presentation.

Key Outcomes

• No votes or final budget actions were recorded; the meeting was a presentation and question-and-answer session.
• The Treasurer's Office presented a $20.1 million FY2027 budget and reported ongoing Tyler-related refund and data-reporting problems; it expected the next first-installment tax bills to go out on time but could not yet rule out second-installment delays.
• The Public Defender presented an FY2027 request centered on a pending workload study whose preliminary results showed a triple-digit attorney shortage; no funding decision was made before the transcript ended.