Bear Digest

State to Meet Thursday About Stadium Despite Governor's 'Dismay'

The canceled meeting for the megastructure bill and Bears stadium in Illinois will come up next Thursday after being postponed this week.
Gene Chamberlain|
J.B. Pritzker remains "dismayed" over how the Bears complimented Indiana Thursday for working hard on a stadium funding law.
J.B. Pritzker remains "dismayed" over how the Bears complimented Indiana Thursday for working hard on a stadium funding law. | Lily Smith/The Register / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

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The panic-induced frenzy of chit chat Thursday about the proposed Bears stadium all overshadowed the fact nothing has been decided or is yet at hand.

The bill in Indiana to authorize a stadium funding plan hasn't been approved yet, and merely cleared a hurdle on the same day that the first hearing about funding the Arlington Heights stadium was canceled in Spingfield as changes were made to wording at the Bears' request.

Because the Bears were behind the wording requests, and it happened when Indiana was clearing a committee hurdle, it merely looked like something major had occurred. In essence, nothing has, and Illinois still has time to get its act in gear.

In fact, the Daily Herald's Chris Placek reported a new Illinois House committee hearing involving the megaproject bill has been scheduled for next week on Thursday at 8 a.m. Then, perhaps more will be known about Illinois trying hard to keep its NFL team.

The only thing that has happened is the amount of time left for the Illinois law to get passed once it has been debated is now reduced. In fact, they might soon be out of time because there is no guarantee that once the Indiana's bill passes and gets signed into law, the Bears would wait for a comparable Illinois proposal.  The Bears could simply take the Indiana offer and end it.

Considering the sweet deal Indiana is offering, the Illinois plan really needs to be ramped up as rapidly as possible.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker, speaking at a function in Oak Park on Friday, first described a situation where Illinois is not really lagging behind and made total sense with his comments and description. The Indiana process is just different than what the Bears need to go through in Illinois and Pritzker also indicated the previous talks had been fruitful. The two sides could be closer than has been revealed.

"I think we've had really productive conversations," Pritzker said.

But, as usual, Pritzker couldn't leave it at that and had to express more attitude toward the team's Thursday statement about Indiana's movement of a bill through committee. It was a Bears statement Pritzker seems hurt by.

"Which, again, is why I was dismayed by the fact they didn't even tell us they were putting (out the statement about Indiana)," Pritzker added.

This is the kind of thing that a governor in such negotiations cannot say, especially when it was his political game-playing and that of his party in Chicago which left the Bears looking around for alternatives and thus Indiana. All they needed to do was what they're doing now and this would have been done last year.

When Pritzker whines about the Bears' public statement regarding Indiana's bill, he only sounds like he's setting up a CYOA situation in case they do leave for Indiana.

Pritzker wasn't content with saying the Bears were seeking only tax rate certainty and about $855 million for infrastructure improvement, while they pay for the stadium's construction themselves. He had to throw in more logs for his own fire, stupid and irrelevant ones.

"There is a limit about what the taxpayers of Illinois are willing to spend," Pritzker said, without showing or revealing his data that tells him exactly what that limit is and why he's even mentioning this.

The Bears have been clear about what they want since the entire situation began. They want tax certainty and infrastructure paid for, and Pritzker knows this. His only purpose is to try and get a commitment from the Bears to Illinois when they haven't even passed the properly worded legislation.

"The Bears really need to step up and kind of be public about what it is they really want," Pritzker said.

If we are at this point and Pritzker really doesn't know this, then his conversations with the Bears haven't really been as productive as he claims because everyone who has followed this closely has known what they want for the last two years. Again, it's tax certainty and infrastructure.

Pritzker needs to quit worrying about what the Bears are saying in press releases and get the job done of convincing Springfield legislators to vote for the megastructure bill.

His feelings of dismay are not important. Boo hoo.

What is important is Indiana has a serious offer out and even if a site near Hammond hasn’t officially been cleared as viable ecologically, they’re working in that state hard and not worrying about what Pritzker and the Springfield stallers are doing OR saying.

Eventually time will run out on Illinois and Pritzker if they don't get to work, and then CYOA talk isn’t going to do the trick for the governor or his Springfield cronies.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.