Illinois governor accuses Emanuel of seeking “cooked-up deal” for Wrigley subsidies

I’ve been studiously ignoring the dustup between Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel over who’ll be the new head of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, because some thing even I can’t take much interest in. So here’s the brief summary: Quinn wants to hire his aide Kelly Kraft for the job, Emanuel wants someone with “proven experience” in financial management. And so the two have locked horns.

Now, though, the gloves have come off, and someone’s dropped the name of Wrigley Field in the matter:

“We’re not gonna have any backroom deals involving the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority and Wrigley Field. I want to make sure there is someone there — the executive director — who is a goalie for the taxpayers and prevents any cooked-up deals behind closed doors on Wrigley Field,” the governor said in an exclusive interview with the Chicago Sun-Times.

Quinn then referred to Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell’s failed plan to have the state acquire and renovate Wrigley under now-convicted-and-jailed former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

“We’re already had a preamble here — a couple of efforts to use public money to invest in Wrigley Field. We don’t want another one of these deals that comes down that involves a private sports stadium, Wrigley Field, wanting public money with the cooperation of City Hall,” Quinn said.

This probably isn’t a sign that Emanuel has secret plans to revisit a state takeover of Wrigley, something that’s been off the table for several years now. (The Sun-Times asserts that “if the stadium authority issued tax exempt bonds, it would reduce the need for the city to forfeit future amusement tax growth,” but as I’ve discussed before, that’d be illegal.) But it certainly does look as if “backroom deals to renovate Wrigley” is going to become a meme in this latest Illinois political throwdown, which can’t be what the Cubs owners were hoping for.