Candidate to repay tax breaks on Chicago mansion

Pritzker said the billionaire will pay the county treasurer by the end of next week. He will repay nearly $133,000 for refunds obtained on a Chicago mansion in 2012, 2013 and 2014 and nearly $199,000 in additional tax savings for 2015 and 2016.

In a review first reported Monday by the Chicago SunTimes, Cook County Inspector General Patrick Blanchard found that family members and associates made “false representations” to the county assessor about the condition of the mansion on Chicago’s Gold Coast, which sits next to another one that Pritzker owns.

Pritzker, whom polls indicate leads Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, moved swiftly Tuesday to remedy a problem that probably will be a focus of attacks by Rauner in the pair’s second face-to-face debate Wednesday in Chicago.

Key to Blanchard’s findings was an October 2015 email in which contractors contended that Pritzker’s wife, M.K. Pritzker, wanted to declare the mansion uninhabitable and directed that toilets be removed before a property tax reassessment.

The Chicago Tribune said an assessor then lowered the mansion’s property tax value from $6.3 million to about $1.1 million.

Earlier, Pritzker complained that Blanchard’s report, meant to be confidential, “was leaked for political purposes in this last month of a campaign.” Rauner, who has used the incident to call his opponent a “tax cheat,” was unimpressed by Pritzker’s attempt to make amends.

“A bank robber who gives the money back is still a bank robber,” Rauner campaign spokesman Will Allison said.