‘We didn’t have time’: Pritzker, leaders defend adjourning without Bears deal

SPRINGFIELD — Hours after Illinois lawmakers failed to approve a stadium incentives structure aimed at keeping the Chicago Bears in Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker acknowledged that the “pride and joy of Illinois” may take a deal to build a football palace in Indiana.

That said, Pritzker and the leaders of the House and Senate defended their processes and priorities at a news conference Monday morning, about five hours after they adjourned an all-night session. They told reporters that a combination of the late emergence of bill language in the Senate, along with their own red lines to not hand out taxpayer dollars to a football team valued at nearly $9 billion, kept it out of the end zone.

“That might happen,” Pritzker said of the team taking a stadium deal to build across the state line, where Hoosier lawmakers have pledged $1 billion in public subsidies.

“But the reality is: I wasn’t willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money in order to give it to a billionaire-owned family or team… as much emotional connection as many of us have to the Bears and to keeping them in the city of Chicago or the state of Illinois,” he added.

At the same time, Pritzker said he would work with House lawmakers over the summer on a stadium package and his “hope is that we’ll be able to provide something for the Bears.”

Pritzker said a special session this summer would be up to the legislative leaders, though House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, told Capitol News Illinois early Monday morning that he wasn’t considering it.

‘It came late’

A bipartisan vote on a hastily crafted bill in the Senate around 3:30 a.m. Monday morning gave late life to hopes the legislature would pass a bill giving the Bears property tax certainty. Unlike a long-discussed structure for a negotiated property tax payment on a privately owned stadium in Arlington Heights, the bill would have allowed five Cook County municipalities that have populations over 70,000 to set up a local stadium authority.

This would have enabled the Bears to avoid paying property taxes altogether on a new stadium, whether it be on a site they currently own in Arlington Heights or in Chicago, where Mayor Brandon Johnson has fought to keep the team.

But the House adjourned about an hour later without taking up the bill.

It was a late-arriving amendment, even in Springfield where lawmakers are accustomed to working through the night at the end of May each year. They’re often up late awaiting thousand-page amendments to bills that have been negotiated for days or months.

But in this instance, the language was essentially novel when it arrived on lawmakers’ desks.

“I respect the Senate president’s processes over there,” Welch said. “You know, that’s the legislative process — the sausage making. It came over late … we didn’t have time to digest it. We didn’t have time to find out what other folks thought of it. We need to have some feedback from our members before asking them to vote for it on the floor, particularly in the wee morning hours.”

Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, said he felt both chambers worked well together throughout the session, even on issues beyond the Bears, but lawmakers ultimately had “no appetite” to provide public funding for the team, despite many being Bears fans.

Pritzker added that neither he nor his staff read the 145-page bill because “it came late.”

“Things happen, and we had a whole lot of things that were foisted upon the state that they were dealing with yesterday,” Pritzker said. “But indeed, the speaker is going to work hard to make sure that the House is making progress.”

‘A fumble’

The proposal was a drastic pivot from the PILOT concept discussed for more than three years. Instead, the structure mimics the mechanics of most modern stadium deals, including the offer the Bears have on the table from Indiana.

This switch-up seemed to come as a surprise to two of the entities it would impact the most: the village of Arlington Heights and the Bears.

Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tinaglia blasted the legislature’s inaction.

“The Village of Arlington Heights has spent the past five years working diligently to prepare for the redevelopment of Arlington Park,” Tinaglia said in a statement. “We are truly disappointed with the outcome from the spring legislative session yet again. Although we recognize that these discussions are complex and involve many stakeholders, this is clearly a fumble for the State of Illinois.”

Minutes after he filed the bill Sunday evening, Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, the Senate’s lead negotiator on the stadium issue, told reporters that the Bears “are now just seeing it” and that he was “looking forward to hearing their response.”

In a statement after the House adjourned Friday morning, the Bears did not address the merits of the Senate bill but reiterated that they “remain on the late spring/early summer timeline” to decide on their future home.

Reporters quizzed Pritzker later Monday about how much he was involved in negotiations on the bill. He received criticism from some lawmakers and observers for a far more hands-off approach to this year’s legislative session in general.

While the governor said he has been intimately involved throughout the process, including several meetings in his Capitol office “throughout the weekend,” he didn’t want to give the Bears special treatment. And seeking “to table set,” Pritzker said the stadium issue was not the most important thing on lawmakers’ agenda, but rather “working to survive” President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Literally, billions of dollars have been taken away from people in our state,” Pritzker said. “We’ve seen these massive tariffs that are affecting people at the grocery store, when they go buy a car, everything else in their lives. Costs are going up, and then we’ve got this war that’s raised the cost of gasoline for everybody… We’re trying to defend the working families of Illinois.”

‘Still time’

The House sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago, said in a statement the House’s decision not to take up the issue is “the reality of trying to move something of this size.”

“There is still time to answer questions, refine concepts, build consensus, and continue discussions with the Bears and all the stakeholders involved” he said. “The legislative pathway remains open.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement Monday that he is “grateful” senators passed a bill that would give the city a chance to retain the team and that the city already has a publicly owned site managed by the framework in the Senate’s legislation.

“While questions remained about the legislation’s design, legislators ultimately reached the same conclusion the City reached in 2024: the strongest proposal for a new stadium centers public ownership, the use of a sports authority and a commitment to public infrastructure,” Johnson said in a statement.

Under the Senate bill, a municipal stadium authority would have the power to issue revenue bonds to fund stadium construction that can be backed through local tax revenue along with private contributions.

The Bears have pledged to finance an Illinois project privately and Pritzker and state lawmakers have long ruled out state subsidies for direct stadium construction. That said, the provision would open the door for local governments to do that.

Pritzker said “that is a choice that people at the local level can make if they want.”

“For example, Arlington Heights and Chicago want to compete in order to have a stadium, and you may recall that the mayor of Chicago held a big press conference with the Bears announcing a $2.5 billion stadium that he had no money to pay for,” Pritzker said, referring to a 2024 plan for a public lakefront stadium that would have required $800 million in state-backed bonds for stadium construction.

“So somehow that was going to have to get paid for,” Pritzker said. “And that’s not something I was willing to do and, indeed, the amount of money that the state is willing to put up is money that we would put up for a business in the state of Illinois for infrastructure alone, not building a stadium.”

As for the megaprojects tool nixed by the Senate: “We still need that, by the way,” Pritzker said, reiterating his charge that Illinois is “behind the curve” given how 38 other states have a statewide mechanism for large developers to negotiate property taxes.

“They’ve always been negotiating about property taxes all across the country,” Pritzker said. “It’s just in Illinois where we have had a disorganized, dysfunctional endeavor forever, and now we’re trying to organize it and make it work, so that businesses will want to come.”

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.