* From the ILGOP…

J.B. Pritzker is under fire this week for abusing vacancy laws to get massive property tax breaks on his two Gold Coast mansions totaling nearly a quarter million dollars.

And Pritzker is slated to get the same tax breaks this year.

But questions remain – such as why the Pritzkers felt it necessary to disconnect all the toilets in the home – allowing them to claim the home as uninhabitable.

Pritzker is taking money from Chicago Public Schools and other City services, and even liberals are taking note.

Mark Brown from the Chicago Sun-Times penned a column yesterday saying that Pritzker “is not paying his fair share of taxes”.

* Mark Brown…

This is not about the commonplace practice of appealing property taxes on someone’s principal place of residence. This is about a very unique situation of a homeowner buying an expensive property next door and being rewarded for being a lousy owner.

As explained by the assessor’s office, this tax break is intended for someone buying a property to rehab it, the idea being they shouldn’t be required to pay full price on their taxes if nobody can live there.

I can’t speak to the exact condition of the home when Pritzker bought it, but I can tell you it was definitely habitable.

At some point afterward, however, all the toilets in the home were disconnected. The Pritzkers haven’t explained when this happened or why it was necessary.

* Pritzker told reporters yesterday in Springfield that the photos shared yesterday by the Republicans didn’t show the house’s problems. He claimed, for instance, that the staircase was falling off the wall…

“It was in terrible disrepair. Actually, the stairs were coming off the wall, the basement is unfinished and has a dirt floor, and so there was nothing in good shape in that house at all, and there was nothing that we did other than we asked that our taxes be reassessed because it wasn’t worth what we paid for it,” Pritzker said. “The truth is we probably over paid for the house, and lots of people have done that, especially in the environment of falling home prices.”

He also said he plans to rehab the house sometime in the future.

* Greg Hinz…

Pritzker paid $3.7 million for the building, below the original list price of $6 million. According to a Chicago magazine story by my colleague Dennis Rodkin, he became only the third owner in 118 years of a building designed by Holabird & Root with unique features. […]

It’s unclear if the building declined with age or if there was internal demolition prior to a possible rehab, but in an appeal filed with Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios, the assessed value of the property dropped from $6.3 million to $1.1 million, saving Pritzker $230,000 in property taxes so far.

OK, so read between the lines a bit. Pritzker paid $3.7 million for the house, but it’s assessed value remained at or above its original $6 million list price. Usually, you’d file for a reassessment right away if you bought a house for much lower than its assessed valuation, but Pritzker didn’t, which cost him some bucks he didn’t need to be paying.

Not defending him or anything, but on that point some of this isn’t totally out of the realm of reasonableness.

Greg also reports that Pritzker claims to have used the mansion next door “as a staging area for the complete renovation of his home next door.

Still, this is all kinda weird to me.

* Meanwhile, Mark Maxwell reports that Pritzker’s property tax appeals attorneys contributed $25,000 to Assessor Joe Berrios (no surprise in that county). He also has Chris Kennedy’s reaction…

“It’s an inherently corruptible system. We ought to reject it. Nobody is confident that the system yields a fair outcome either for individuals - but most importantly - for the kids who depend on the income to fund their schools.”

And from Pritzker himself…

“This is an attack by Bruce Rauner and by the GOP because they really have nothing else to talk about, no accomplishments to tout, and so they’re taking any shot they can take. Obviously they are taking a shot at me because they think I’m a threat to them.”

* Sen. Daniel Biss gets the last word…

Right now, two billionaires running for #ilgov are fighting each other over who did the better job of getting out of paying their taxes.

— Daniel Biss (@danielbiss) May 15, 2017

…Adding… OK, one more. This ILGOP video compiles some of the TV coverage, which isn’t flattering for Pritzker…