West Cook News

The property tax bill for WGN investigative reporter Ben Bradley is now under investigation after Patch reported he has been underpaying property taxes.

“Nice tax bill you got there BenBradleyTV," a Twitter personality posting under the alias Emma Woodhouse said.

Bradley’s low tax bill came to light after he listed his home for sale for $1.899 million.

He purchased the home in 2010 for $1.4 million but never thought to challenge the ultra-low property tax rate of $5,000 per year. The taxes on the home should have been somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per year. The home is owned by a land trust but is Bradley’s primary residence. He purchased it from the builder in 2014.

The county assessor has valued the home at only $231,000 - but that value seems to have applied to the home previously on the plot, an 800-square-foot, 1915 one-story home dwarfed in size by Bradley’s six-bedroom, six-bathroom mansion listed as 6,113 square feet.

Bradley pleaded ignorance when asked by Patch about the low tax rate.

"When questions were raised, we immediately reached out to the assessor’s office and have heard nothing back. If, and when, they get back to me, I will of course pay the amount due … as I have always done in the past," Bradley said.

"If the assessor wants to claim I owe something different, and that’s proven true, of course I’m going to pay," Bradley added. “We have never sought a lowering of our tax bill, and we have been repeatedly told it sometimes takes years in Cook County for the appraisals to catch up.”

The most expensive home in south suburban Flossmoor, Bradley’s hometown, most recently sold for $415,000 and has a property tax bill of $29,706, an effective tax rate of 7.1%.  

The home, at 1532 Butterfield Road, was formerly owned by the Duchossois family.  

Comparable homes nearby in Hinsdale sort much higher property taxes such as a seven bedroom, six bathroom home located at 125 E Maple St., where the owner pays over $30,000 in taxes per year.

Bradley appears to be pulling one over on his peers as well.

Former WLS-TV news anchor Rob Johnson listed his home in Hinsdale last year for nearly $2 million. In 2019 he paid over $24,000 in taxes for the home. That home eventually sold for $1,925,000 in June 2021.  

Johnson and Bradley worked together at WLS, where Bradley spent 14 years before making the move to WGN in 2017, three years after purchasing the home.

He currently serves as co-anchor of the 4-5 p.m. news hour with Lourdes Duarte.

Former house speaker Michael Madigan made a self-reported over $1 million per year as a partner in Madigan & Getzendanner by providing sweetheart property tax rates to clients in Cook County. Madigan is now under indictment on 22 counts of public corruption.

Current Chicago Alderman Ed Burke, who is also under indictment for allegedly shaking down a fast-food restaurant, has made millions off of participating in the same scheme with his law firm.

“Madigan and Burke got rich in the lucrative and ethically murky legal field of politicians representing commercial property owners seeking to reduce their real estate taxes. Their involvement has long raised red flags because the Cook County property tax assessment and appeal system operates within the framework of local Democratic politics, where both men have long been among the most important players,” Mark Brown reported in the Chicago Sun-Times.