In the spring of 2009, the Cook County Board of Review investigated the circumstances around a number of tax appeals championed by Paul Froehlich, a Democratic state representative from Schaumburg. On May 4th and 5th of 2009, the board commissioners and their top deputies held a series of confidential executive sessions to interview employees and discuss the matter.
Chicago obtained copies of transcripts from three executive sessions. Those transcripts follow in their entirety. The transcripts, which have never been made public before, reveal that Larry Rogers Jr. and Brendan Houlihan, the other two commissioners on the board, were concerned about how certain members of Berrios’s staff processed the appeals linked to Froehlich. The transcripts show that the board’s investigation also uncovered evidence that the problems in Berrios’s office were not an anomaly. The investigation found other instances where politically connected homeowners appeared to
receive favorable treatment from Berrios’s office.