The Illinois House yesterday voted 78-32 to pass the “megaprojects” bill that Chicago Bears execs have long been seeking to provide as much as $2 billion in tax breaks for a new stadium district development in Arlington Heights. (Side note: You’ve got to love the latest rendering that features a stadium with the words “Welcome to Stadium” over the entrance.) And bill sponsor Kam Buckner has provided some explanation of how the final version of the bill would also provide his promised “property tax relief” to local residents who don’t own an NFL team:
The latest proposal would put 50% of special PILOT payments into a property tax relief fund that would then be divided 60% toward property tax rebates for homeowners in the district where the megaproject is located, and 40% into the Illinois Property Tax Relief Fund.
So the Bears would still be saving a massive amount of money by paying less in PILOTs than they normally would in property taxes, but some of those PILOTs would now be diverted into a fund to reduce the amount of property taxes that others pay. Except that normally these payments would go to the local school district, so if they instead go to refund other Illinoisans’ property taxes, then either the schools will be left without enough money — something the local teachers union is already worried about — or property taxes in the rest of the district will have to rise to compensate, which kind of defeats the purpose of providing property tax relief.
The bill still needs to be voted on by the Illinois state senate, so maybe we’ll get some clarity before then on how this property tax perpetual-motion machine is supposed to work. Or maybe Buckner can explain it better, let’s see:
“This is about making Illinois competitive, but in a way that keeps people in the center and focus of this,” Buckner said. “Just because someone builds a bridge and someone is the first person to cross that bridge, doesn’t mean that bridge is built for them.”
Nope, time to look elsewhere for clarity! Illinois senate, you’re up.
UPDATE: The Bears owners have responded to the House passage of the tax break by saying they still want more on top of this, in the form of that $855 million in state “infrastructure” money they keep talking about. You get one chance at leverage, may as well ask for everything you can.
If I am living in Illinois, I’d be livid. I’m already annoyed at my state legislature in Indiana wasting all that time rolling out the red carpet for what was never going to happen while ensuring a “safer” project in a MLS stadium would be killed off simply because it would have been built in a Democrati city.
I do live in Illinois and, yeah, I’m not happy about it at all. I’d be thrilled if they got Indiana to pay for it.
The taxes are a small part of it for me. What really grinds me is how we keep subsidizing billionaires. 20-something years ago they demanded a totally renovated stadium, saying they couldn’t live without it. And here we are, with their collection plate out again.
But big picture, I wake up every day happy to live in this state,
Funny to see Buckner evaporate his political capital in Chicago to pass this bill which he’s trying to sell as “not just about the Bears,” only for the Bears to drop the facade and insist on a $1 billion payout for infrastructure.
The House felt comfortable passing this because Buckner was able to twist it into tax breaks for the working class, but ultimately this process would come down to the negotations between a multi-billion dollar franchise and heavily disadvantaged school boards if this becomes law.