* The Economist…

“We sue the city every year,” says a wealthy Chicagoan who lives in an elegant apartment building in Gold Coast, a North side neighbourhood. If his property-tax lawyer manages to knock $100,000 off the bill for the condominium’s owners, as the lawyer has done in past years, he gets to keep $25,000. It is great business for property-tax lawyers—and a great saving for their clients.

The office of Joseph Berrios, the elected value-assessor of Cook County, America’s second-biggest county with 5.2m residents and 1.8m parcels of land, of which Chicago is part, encourages people to challenge their property-tax bills, arguing that it believes “in their importance as the taxpayers’ voice”. According to the Chicago Tribune, which put Jason Grotto, an investigative reporter, on the case for a year, such appeals tripled under Mr Berrios, who took over in 2010. In 2015 appeals concerning 370,000 parcels of land were filed. About 50% were successful (the success rate in New York City is 16%). Property-tax lawyers earned an estimated $133m from tax reductions they battled for between 2009 and 2015. The Tribune also reports that since 2009 Mr Berrios, who is also chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party, has raised about $5m through three different campaign funds, a record for an assessor in Illinois. More than half of that came from property-tax lawyers. Mr Berrios’s re-election campaign says only that it has $1.6m on hand.

“The system is unfair and corrupt,” claims Fritz Kaegi, a former investment manager who quit his job earlier this year to try to unseat Mr Berrios. Mr Kaegi refuses to take donations from property-tax law firms, especially those employing the state party’s top brass, and promises not to hire any relatives for county jobs if elected. Mr Berrios is an ally of Michael Madigan, the Speaker of Illinois’s House of Representatives, chairman of the state’s Democratic Party—and a partner at Madigan & Getzendanner, which represents dozens of the most valuable buildings in downtown Chicago in property-tax appeals. From 2008 to June 2016 the firm lowered its clients’ bills by at least $70m. Several members of the Berrios family are employed by the county, including one hired under Mr Berrios to work in his own office. […]

The American Civil Liberties Union is preparing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit on behalf of owners of homes in poor neighbourhoods. David Orr, the outspoken Cook County clerk, recently endorsed Mr Kaegi. “No action has been taken to clean up this mess,” says Mr Orr, who thinks that it suits most of his Democratic colleagues to keep things as they are. Still, at least he can count on the support of the party’s machine, including Toni Preckwinkle, the president of the Cook County board. A few months ago she ordered yet another review of the system by the Civic Consulting Alliance, a non-profit organisation, which according to Mr Orr is already stalling.