House Republican Leader Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs) and Rep. Grant Wehrli (R-Naperville) recently introduced House Bill 5960, which would define property tax vacancy fraud as a Class 4 felony in the state of Illinois.
The move comes after a Cook County inspector report found that Illinois Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker “knowingly committed fraud to avoid paying $330,000 in taxes,” an Illinois Republican Party press release states.
“The Cook County Inspector General’s report made it very clear that J.B. Pritzker has defrauded all the taxpayers of Cook County,” Durkin said in the press release. “The General Assembly needs to address this issue.”
The Cook County report stated that Pritzker removed toilets from his mansion to have it declared uninhabitable so that he wouldn’t have to pay the tax money, according to the press release.
“It is clear Mr. Pritzker will only put his own self-interests above the taxpayers, and now more than ever we don’t need another Democrat who manipulates the system to benefit his own pockets,” Wehril said.
