Some real dirty crap going at Cook County

presiding over this

Cook County OK’d insider deal for Ald. Carrie Austin’s top aide. This breach of the public trust is blatant and calls for prosecution. 

Chester Wilson’s delinquent property tax tab on a South Side building topped $200K. County land bank
erased that — and gave the property to a Wilson business partner for $40,000.

By Lauren FitzPatrick and Tim Novak Nov 4, 2019, 5:30am CST

Ald. Carrie Austin (34th) and her chief of staff, Chester Wilson Jr. (center, yellow tie), at the May 20 inauguration of Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times


For more than 10 years, Ald. Carrie Austin’s chief of staff Chester Wilson Jr. owned a two-story brick building at 103rd Street and Corliss Avenue, devastated by fire and mired in housing court for building code violations.

Wilson stopped paying property taxes on the building in 2008 and racked up a debt of more than $200,000 in taxes and interest — a debt any potential buyer would have to pay.

So Wilson cut a deal with the Cook County Land Bank Authority, a program that wipes out delinquent property taxes on vacant or abandoned properties in hopes of finding someone to redevelop them and return them to the tax rolls.

In July 2017, Wilson hired the county agency to change the locks on the derelict building. And then, instead of paying for that, he agreed to surrender the property to the land bank. The county wiped out all of the taxes he didn’t pay and agreed to turn over the property to Lisa Livingston, a daycare operator who’d been a Wilson business partner.

What Wilson and Livingston didn’t mention — and what land bank officials failed to catch — is that, months earlier, the two resold a single-family home they had rehabbed, says Rob Rose, the land bank executive who OKed the deal.

Rose says Wilson — whose City Hall salary tops $118,000 — still owes $113,609 for a decade of unpaid taxes on the property. Add in interest payments that the Chicago Sun-Times calculates at $98,982, and the total bill was around $212,591.

While the land bank has wiped off the unpaid tax bills from the building, no one from any county taxing agency — the assessor, the clerk or the treasurer — has notified Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx about filing a lien against Wilson to try to collect any taxes he might owe. The state’s attorney says it has never been asked to file liens against any of 1,300 property owners whose land has been taken by the land bank since it began operating in 2013.
Robert Rose, executive director of the Cook County Land Bank Authority. Cook County

Rose says the May 2018 sale of the Corliss Avenue property, which he characterized as “an absolute aberration” for the land bank, never should have been allowed to happen because of the relationship between Wilson and Livingston.

But now that Livingston, who operates one of her two state-funded daycare centers in Austin’s ward, is in so deep financially for the rehab work, Rose says he won’t void the sale.

Nor will he cancel a loan he granted Livingston that would have refunded $20,000 — half of the $40,000 she paid for the building — had she completed the rehab by May 2019, which was the deadline for the loan.

Instead, they’ve given her another year to finish work on the building.

Then, if she fails to finish the job by April 24, 2020, Rose says the land bank would seize the property from Livingston, who would lose the estimated $350,000 she says she has spent on things like tuck pointing, windows and plumbing.

Asked whether Livingston lied on her paperwork, Rose acknowledges she did.

“But I also have to be pragmatic,” he says. “I’ve been able to substantiate the work that she’s doing, OK. So, in making that decision, the balance here is also what’s best for the neighborhood and what’s best for this area.”The building at 10300-02 S. Corliss Ave. as seen from 103rd Street. Lauren FitzPatrick / Sun-Times

Rose says he’s confident Wilson isn’t financing the rehab work but that the land bank will take steps to preclude Wilson from profiting off any businesses that might move into the storefront as well as to ensure that Livingston can’t sell the property to a company affiliated with Wilson.