Editorial: Illinois taxpayers deserve more than excuses for the $250M computer mess

Chicago Tribune

08-04-2025

In 2015, the Cook County Circuit Court and the Illinois Supreme Court inked distinct deals with a Texas-based tech firm to overhaul their computer systems. A decade later, project costs — which were originally estimated to total $75 million — have more than tripled to over $250 million, with years in delays. A Tribune and Injustice Watch investigation uncovered how badly these Tyler Technologies deals have gone.
On paper, these projects promised transparency and efficiency — from digitized court filings to error-free property tax billing. But instead of modernization, we got bloated budgets, endless delays and glitchy systems.
Tyler, for its part, blamed the delays on shifting leadership and poorly staffed and under-resourced government clients — but the Tribune's investigation tells a more complicated and troubling story of a firm that targets weakly supervised government contracts, where deadlines and oversight are often looser than in the private sector.
In a letter to Board President Toni Preckwinkle urging the county to sue to recover money from Tyler, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas called the county's agreement 'possibly the worst technology contract with a vendor that Cook County has ever written.'
'Clearly, giving Tyler any upfront money has made the County look foolish, inept stewards of the people's money,' Pappas wrote. 'However we do it, we must clean up the wreckage Cook County fostered when it signed this ill-advised contract with an arrogant and disinterested vendor.'
The county's contractual structure led to additional expenditures. Preckwinkle didn't fire Tyler, as Pappas urged — she hired an outside tech research firm to navigate the problem. Cook County ended up paying an extra $22 million for external consultants to oversee the troubled projects and $59 million to maintain legacy systems that were supposed to have been replaced.
To be fair, government tech projects are complicated, and overruns aren't uncommon. But Tyler's pattern of delays and missed benchmarks goes well beyond the norms..
This mess and the price tag for a lousy deal to clean it up are the sort of thing that gave rise to the chaotic Department of Government Efficiency and a broad appetite for slashing government spending. People don't like it when their tax dollars are spent unwisely, and it makes them wonder what other problems are lying beneath the surface.
While Tyler's tactics and weak execution are unacceptable, much of the blame has to be with the supervising officials who ended up with contracts that left them and their constituents vulnerable.
Why Tyler Technologies, we wonder, and not a tested firm such as Accenture, which has a significant Chicagoland presence?
Maybe Accenture would have cost more. But Tyler wasn't a bargain in the end.
Worse, the contracts followed a history of political contributions dating back over two decades, including $25,000 in donations to various Cook County officials overseeing modernization efforts, according to the investigation.
There's a lot to learn here for future agreements. The upfront payments to Tyler with little quality-based recourse represents a cautionary tale. Governments should implement stronger procurement processes, tighter contract terms, and tap independent watchdogs for major tech projects like these moving forward.
The lesson is clear: governments must be tough negotiators, not soft targets.