Sami James

Maria Pappas has served as Cook County Treasurer since 1998. She has led the Treasurer’s Office through a series of transformative technological, automation and modernization advancements. Treasurer Pappas oversees the second-largest property tax collection and distribution system in the United States. She is responsible for printing and mailing bills to owners of more than 1.8 million parcels, collecting more than $17 billion in taxes and distributing those funds to more than 2,200 local units of government. During her tenure she has reduced staff from 250 employees in 1998 to 59 employees in 2023. She introduced online payments, established payment facilities at numerous banks across Cook County, and developed a system to identify and refund overpayments to taxpayers without extensive paperwork. Pappas has been a champion of transparency, introducing the Debt Disclosure Ordinance to provide taxpayers with detailed information about local government spending. She has conducted outreach to ethnic homeowners, returning millions in refunds through her Black and Latino Houses Matter programs. Pappas has helped countries like China and Greece with property tax systems and automation. She has spoken at international forums, including the Organization of American States and the Cities Summit of the Americas. Pappas was born in 1949 and hails from Warwood, West Virginia. She has earned degrees in sociology from West Liberty State College, guidance and counseling from West Virginia University; a doctorate in counseling and psychology from Loyola University of Chicago; and a law degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law. Her public service began with a grant from the Illinois Attorney General's Office, where she worked at Chicago's Altgeld Gardens public housing project. Her work in youth drug prevention led her to prisons and jails and eventually to law school. She served as a Cook County Commissioner from 1990 to 1998.