Category: Chicago Bears

Bears reportedly seeking $1.5B+ in tax money from Illinois

access_time personNeil deMause

Crain’s Chicago Business has some (rumored) details of what NFL and Bears execs talked with Illinois officials about last week, and it’s a new way to give the team a heaping helping of tax breaks:

The Chicago Bears’ potential path to building a new stadium in Arlington Heights is veering toward a model that would leave ownership of the venue to a new public authority rather than the team itself.

The approach — which cleared the Illinois Senate in May but never reached the House — has emerged as a focus of recent discussions among the Bears and state officials, sources familiar with the talks said.

Public ownership of sports stadiums, as a reminder, isn’t generally like public ownership of other things: The team still controls all the actual stadium revenues, while a public authority just holds the deed. This takes the stadium off the property tax rolls; the team could make payments in lieu of taxes or pay rent instead, but neither of those sounds like they’re on the table here. The Bears owners have long been angling for a reduction in taxes as part of a stadium deal in Arlington Heights, but that’s faced legislative pushback, so instead they’re pivoting to this — it’s not clear why Illinois elected officials would be happier about having the Bears pay no property taxes instead of reduced property taxes, but legislators gonna legislate.

The previous best estimate of the cost to taxpayers of a property tax discount was $700 million; zeroing out property taxes entirely could raise the price to somewhat higher than that, though probably not all that much higher. But that’s not all Bears owner George McCaskey would get under the plan that passed the Senate in May:

The Senate bill as passed by the chamber also included the ability for a municipality to create Sales Tax & Revenue, or STAR, bond districts that would dedicate state and local sales taxes to back bonds supporting infrastructure projects. The team estimated last year its stadium-anchored entertainment district on the 326-acre Arlington Park site would require $855 million in new publicly-funded infrastructure.

How much sales tax money a STAR district would siphon off depends on the size of the STAR district, which as we’ve seen in Kansas can be as big as anyone wants it to be, so $855 million is a reasonable enough target cost. That would put the total cost of a Bears stadium to Illinois taxpayers at more than $1.5 billion, which is, as they say, starting to be real money.

None of this necessarily means that the Bears owners will necessarily give up on an Indiana move if Illinois coughs up tax subsidies — or, for that matter, that the Bears definitely will move to Indiana if Illinois doesn’t. If Crain’s unnamed sources are to be believed, though, it’s going to be on the table during a brief legislative session in November and December; hopefully local reporters will uncover more official details before then.

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Friday roundup: Goodell meets with IL leaders on Bears, KC okays public vote it says won’t apply to Royals

access_time personNeil deMause

Slow news week, busy Friday roundup, as the saying goes. (I didn’t say it was an old saying.)

  • Roger Goodell and a Chicago Bears minority owner met this week with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and state legislative officials, and if you want to take that as a sign that the league and team want a better option than moving to Indiana, go for it. If you want to take it as a sign that they’re trying to create leverage on Indiana counties to approve all the requested tax subsidies, that works too. Could be both! It’s always important to have a backup plan.
  • The Kansas City council has scheduled an April ballot measure on whether future sports stadiums and arena funding will subsequently require ballot measures, prompting an immediate debate on what “future” and “subsequently” will mean for the Royals stadium plans. Missouri Workers Power says a yes vote would apply to a Royals project, Mayor Quinton Lucas says nuh-uh, this seems destined to be resolved by the robot lawyers.
  • Buffalo Bills execs say they’re listening to fan complaints about obstructed views and not being allowed to bring in water bottles to refill at their new taxpayer-funded stadium. “We anticipated it would be a bit of a learning process,” said Bills president of business operations Pete Guelli, who never could have expected fans would want to see the game or drink water, these kids today are so coddled.
  • Athletics owner John Fisher still hasn’t tapped the $380 million in state money he’s been promised for a Las Vegas stadium, after spending $700 million of his own money and money borrowed from Goldman Sachs and with $1.4 billion still to go. Why? Fisher hasn’t said, but it doesn’t really matter whose dollars get spent first, unless bond rates keep soaring and Nevada ends up having to finance the more expensive part of the stadium debt, that’d be bad.
  • MLB is looking at building a temporary stadium in a national park oh never mind they’re not now.
  • Sedgwick County, Kansas has run out of sales tax surcharge money to pay for upkeep of Wichita’s arena, leading local officials to try to find other money to avoid dipping into property tax revenues that would otherwise go to the general fund. (The county does collect some arena profits and naming rights money, but not enough to cover maintenance costs.) And since any money that the county spends on the arena is money that could have gone into the general fund, the current plan appears to be hitting up the city for the cash, on the grounds that the county “built the arena as a favor to Wichita,” sure, sure.
  • “Cities keep shelling out taxpayer money for sports stadiums, yet the economics almost never makes sense.” Accurate! Most of the Conversation essay by University of Tampa economic professors Abigail Hall and Aaron D. Wood will be familiar to regular readers of this site, but it’s worth bookmarking, if only for all the useful links to studies it contains on everything from how little positive economic impact sports venues have to how most sports spending is by local residents who would spend that money elsewhere nearby anyway.
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Friday roundup: Cleveland, Nashville keep throwing good stadium money after bad

access_time personNeil deMause

Running late today, let’s do a speed round:

  • Upkeep costs for the Cleveland Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena continue to climb, with one estimate placing them at $261 million, and the county-run Gateway Economic Development Corp. still doesn’t have money identified to pay for them. “We need to figure this out,” said Gateway board chair Virginia “GiGi” Benjamin; given that the Guardians’ and Cavs’ leases only run though 2036 and 2034 respectively, Gateway could always just not spend the money and dare the teams to break their leases a few years early, or at least ask the team owners to kick in a bit more if they don’t want Gateway to default, but still nobody seems to be considering that option, or at least pricing out whether it would be cheaper than spending $261 million.
  • The Tennessee Titans owners are seeking another $75 million for a pedestrian bridge to their new stadium on top of $1.26 billion to build the stadium itself, part of $700 million in public spending set aside for the stadium area, move over, Indiana, there may be a new grift-that-keeps-on-giving champion.
  • Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s lawsuit to get the city of Inglewood to repay him for about $400 million in roads, sidewalks, utilities, and other “public services” for his otherwise privately funded stadium has ended in a judge confirming that the agreement for Inglewood to cover those costs was nullified in a previous court ruling, so sucks to be you, Stan Kroenke. Expect an appeal, and for the two sides to try to settle out of court for a smaller amount.
  • NBA commissioner Adam Silver said it is his “hope and belief that the Trail Blazers can be successful in Portland, Oregon” but that they “need a state-of-the-art arena” but that he’s talked to Blazers owner Tom Dundon and wants to “lower the temperature bit in these negotiations,” all of which are very Adam Silver things to say. It seems like Silver would like for Dundon to find a way to accept a very large taxpayer check while also ensuring that the check is as large as possible, which is why the owners pay him the big bucks.
  • The Kansas City Star says the key difference between K.C. giving Royals owner $600 million toward a new stadium and giving Current owners Angie and Chris Long $185 million toward an expanded stadium is that the Longs are the ones selling the bonds instead of the city, which will “protect the city in the case of shortfalls.” Except that the Longs will get to repay their bonds with city sales tax revenues, so if there’s no shortfall in those, city residents are still on the hook for $185 million. Maybe all of Kansas City journalists need remedial economics lessons?
  • The Washington Commanders parking garages are no longer set to be translucent, now they will just be set in a featureless void or way far in the distance instead.
  • Longshot recidivist Chicago mayoral candidate Willie Wilson (not that one) says he would resolve the Bears stadium battle by paying to build a dome atop Soldier Field and sell the Bears owners land for a new practice facility and give the team (and nearby homeowners) property tax breaks, at a cost of nobody has asked him, the media are just reprinting his campaign glurge, this is fine.
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Friday roundup: Vegas stadium board approves Raiders cash after “fastest meeting in the history of $75m giveaways”

access_time personNeil deMause

Welcome to the end of another programming week, one that was way busier than you’d expect for the dregs of summer. Let’s get through the rest of the week’s news and get you out of here for the long weekend:

  • Also eager to get out of town for the long weekend, apparently: The Las Vegas Stadium Authority, which voted unanimously Wednesday to give $75 million from a “waterfall” reserve fund of hotel tax money to the Raiders, to be used mostly toward a $158 million upgrade of an entry plaza. The authority took this action after just two public comments and none from the authority board members themselves, in what local podcaster Dayvid Figler called “the fastest meeting in the history of $75 million giveaways.” Board chair Steve Hill presented the plan as in response to the “need to keep driving all those great results that Jeremy presented,” referring to Jeremy Aguero, the paid sports team consultant and hotel management degree holder who for some reason gets to do all the economic analyses of sports projects in Nevada. (Hill, of course, is an unregistered sports team lobbyist too, Las Vegas is truly a growth coalition at its finest.)
  • The Kansas City council put off a rezoning vote for a new Royals stadium district again, because they want to wait first to get all the city’s mega-TIF districts finalized first. The council could have waited to figure out how it’s going to pay for its $1.1 billion share of the project before approving the money, but there was democracy afoot, had to nip that in the bud.
  • The Royals deal is still facing not only a potential April public vote — plus a likely lawsuit over whether the city can move ahead regardless of the results since it already approved the Royals deal — but a lawsuit charging that the state money being used for the project was passed illegally; the Missouri state supreme court is currently mulling whether that suit can move forward.
  • Chicago Bears officials are finally getting around to asking fans if they would still buy tickets if the team moved to Indiana, and are they taking the opportunity to sell fans on a “surrounded by restaurants, entertainment, and green space, creating a true gameday destination” with “one of the most robust gameday tailgating environments in the NFL”? You bet they are!
  • New Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski says his new $2.3 billion stadium, built with the aid of $2 billion in public money, will enable him to move the team’s payroll into the top 10 to 15 in MLB, after years at the bottom. That’s never really happened before with past MLB stadiums — there are some lovely charts showing this in J.C. Bradbury’s new book, wait for it — but there’s a first time for everything.
  • Speaking of Bradbury, he has a nice article over at The Conversation analyzing why we’re seeing so many new NFL stadiums being built with public money right now when economists and taxpayers alike think they’re a bad idea. Tl;dr: It’s the leases, stupid (and the stupid leases).
  • The NHL’s attempts to pit Houston and Austin against each other to compete for a expansion franchise have at least started to pay off, with Houston Mayor John Whitmire saying this week that “We’ll definitely be a better location than Austin” and “If you talk to the sports franchises in town, I think they’d tell you we’re great partners.” Still no word on what kind of money Houston (or Austin) might offer toward a new hockey arena, but you know that’s what Gary Bettman is waiting to hear.

 

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Friday roundup: Tampa council approves plan to give $2B in public money to Rays stadium, says it’s not really public money

access_time personNeil deMause

The Tampa city council spent all day meeting yesterday about the Tampa Bay Rays stadium deal, but honestly they could have saved time and just voted first thing in the morning. Public speakers were split in their opinions — public speakers are always split — and as for councilmembers themselves, there was little actual discussion for most of the day, with elected officials mostly talking past each other, knowing that everyone’s vote was already decided going in. The only reason you drop a half-finished bill on legislators’ desks less than a week before the vote is to avoid robust public debate, waiting till you know you have a slim majority then calling a snap vote while you know you have a W. The final vote was 4-3 in favor, same as had been since councilmember Bill Carlson used the leverage of his being a swing vote to win effectively no concessions whatsoever while patting himself on the back for doing so.

(WUSF claimed that the swing vote was councilmember Naya Young, but she’d already voted yes to the deal the first time it came up for a vote, leaving open the question of whether the NPR station doesn’t know what a swing vote is or just can’t remember as far back as March. The Tampa Bay Times, meanwhile, parroted Carlson’s line that Rays owner Patrick Zalupski will “cover” $100 million that previously would have come from city property taxes, even though Zalupski’s loan will still be repaid with city property taxes. This has not been a banner week for Tampa area journalism.)

The closest the council came to open debate was at the tail end of the meeting, whcn councilmembers took turns giving statements. I didn’t listen to all of it, but did hear councilmember Luis Viera claim that two-thirds of the stadium is being privately paid for because it’s “revenues from the project” — notwithstanding that it’s tax revenues that anyone other than Zalupski would be paying to the city treasury if they built such a project, but that instead will be kicked back to pay for the stadium costs; if that’s your criterion, everyone should get to write their yearly IRS checks to themselves, on that grounds that it’s tax money that “wouldn’t exist” without them. Councilmember Lynn Hurtak countered that the deal — what we know of it so far, given the many documents that remain unresolved — would put Tampa taxpayers on the hook for an unknown amount of future upgrade costs and called on councilmembers to “show we’re the smart city”; Carlson and council chair Alan Clendenin (yep, this guy) then mansplained at her to read the stadium funding agreement, something she’d already made plainly clear she had done, in detail.

There’s still a Hillsborough County Commission vote today, and while anything can happen, the council was universally seen as the higher hurdle here. For now, Tampa elected officials just voted to approve at least $180 million in future city property tax money plus $400 million or so in future city property tax breaks plus unknown amounts of future property tax kickbacks for additional upgrades, plus $1.5 billion or more in county and state subsidies, all to build a stadium for a billionaire team owner with no other offers on the table from other cities, after hardly any debate and before all the documents have been finalized. If there’s any upside, it’s that the interminable Rays stadium saga appears to be nearing an end, at least for the next couple of decades until the team’s lease at the new place gets close to running out; the cost is only the most expensive taxpayer stadium subsidy in MLB history.

Will other cities be the smart city? Let’s see how stadium and arena matters are going elsewhere:

  • Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas’s explanation for spending an extra $7 million a year on bond payments for a Royals stadium is that it’s not just to get around a public vote, it’s also that the more expensive bonds would be easier for the city to default on. With a sales pitch like that, the city may end up having to offer an even higher interest rate than 5.725% to get anyone to buy their stadium bonds.
  • The Beacon News, meanwhile, says that even though Royals owner John Sherman will only be putting up $55 million for a community benefits agreement against $600 million in city funding, that’s fair because tithing one-tenth of your income to private charity is a Christian tradition. That’s not even true, but it wouldn’t make any more sense if it were, just let it go, it’s been a bad week for journalism all around.
  • NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said he has talked to some Illinois legislators about getting a Chicago Bears stadium done in that state. “We want to make sure that Arlington Heights and Illinois have an opportunity, as well as Indiana, to put their best foot forward,” said Goodell, presumably because “The bidding is now open!” would sound too crass.
  • The Alpharetta City Council approved zoning changes that could lead to an NHL arena in Atlanta’s far northern suburbs, if Atlanta’s far northern suburbs got an NHL team, which nobody is predicting will actually happen.
  • There could be a bidding war for the Oakland Arena between arena management titans Legends Global and Oak View Group, though both parties appear to be offering roughly the same amount of money (roughly $100 million), instead competing on which company can provide better “long-term stewardship” for the venue.
  • Sports teams are really expensive when you’re bidding against billionaires, film at 11.
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Friday roundup: Plano residents to vote on $700m Stars arena subsidy, Bears still playing hard to get with IL and IN

access_time personNeil deMause

In case you missed it, sports economist/meme master J.C. Bradbury has a new book on sports subsidy deals due out soon: This One Will Be Different details the latest in stadium and arena deals and why they never pay off for the public, with a particular focus on the Atlanta Braves‘ extraction of money from Cobb County for a new stadium just 17 years after getting their last one, which he had a front row seat for. And for the run up to the publication date, Bradbury has been building out his sports economics website with all sorts of fresh goodies: FAQs on stadium economics and how stadiums are funded, links to academic studies and presentations, and even a series of YouTube shorts on the lessons of past deals and the prospects for future ones. Check it out, it’s entertaining and eye-opening rabbit holes all the way down!

But don’t go just yet, because first we have another week of stadium and arena news to get through:

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Indiana gov to Porter County: If you want to miss out on fun of giving $250m in tax money to Bears, your loss

access_time personNeil deMause

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun says he isn’t sweating Porter County leaders’ opposition to raising food and beverage taxes for a new Chicago Bears stadium the next county over, because really it’s Porter County that would be missing out on all the fun of taking part in shoveling money at the Bears owners:

Under the law, Porter County would have to approve a one-percent food and beverage tax to have representation on the stadium authority. The governor said if it doesn’t get approved, the biggest impact would be on Porter County itself.

“If they choose not to put any skin in the game, they’re not going to have any say-so for what happens from all the economic benefits we’re going to get from it,” Braun said.

Maybe you’re the one up a stump, Porter County! Does a county get a chance to fund a stadium deal every day?

The whole Porter County kerfuffle points up one of the weirder things about the Indiana Bears stadium deal: Though it was passed by the legislature back in February, it didn’t precisely spell out who would be spending what on a stadium, or even where exactly it would be. A newly created sports authority will be able to offer the Bears owners money from a whole bunch of taxes, only some of which actually exist yet:

  • All new property tax, income tax, and sales tax for the next 35 years from an omni-TIF district encompassing the stadium and an undetermined number of square miles around it. This could certainly amount to billions of dollars, much of it potentially cannibalized from spending that has nothing to do with the Bears, but just as we saw in Kansas, it’s impossible to say exactly how much without knowing the size of the district.
  • A doubling of the Lake County hotel tax from 5% to 10%, which would provide at least $90 million.
  • Those 1% food and beverage tax surcharges in Lake and Porter counties, which would be worth about $250 million each, if approved.
  • A 12% ticket tax, which would be worth about another $200 million, though as established ticket taxes are unlike other taxes in that they tend to come out of team owners’ revenues.

The best guess at the total public cost is “easily past $4 billion,” but that could go up or down depending on what gets approved in terms of that tax diversion district plus the new taxes. And a quarter-billion dollars from Porter County seems like a significant amount of money, though I suppose Braun is right in that if county leaders balk at that, the state could always compensate by running the omni-TIF district all the way to the Ohio border.

All this makes Indiana’s bid for the Bears a bit of a moving target in the state’s bidding war with Illinois, which is no doubt very much to Bears owner George McCaskey’s liking. (“You’re willing to give us $1.5 billion in property tax breaks and infrastructure money, you say? Well, what if I told you Indiana was offering a TIF district the size of the entire Local Group?”) Right now you have a three-way — or more, given the various Illinois factions — game of chicken going on, and nobody’s showing each other their cards, and … okay, maybe it’s too early in the day for me to be writing extended metaphors. If anyone says they know how much money Bears execs could get out of either Indiana or Illinois, they’re lying, that’s the upshot here.

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Friday roundup: Portlanders balk at giving Blazers owner $600m, KC gives initial okay of $235m to expand 2-year-old soccer stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

Too damn hot! Gonna see how few words I can use today, to save electricity, y’know. That headline already caused voltage reductions across Brooklyn!

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Friday roundup: Pelicans owner seeks deal for state-funded velour, ballot measure on Royals stadium could face court fight

access_time personNeil deMause

First off, a special note of thanks to all the FoS supporters who get daily posts by email for your patience while I’ve spent the last week or two figuring out how to make the formatting more readable on mobile devices. (The actual code took just a few minutes to write; figuring out where to insert it in the convoluted system that sends out notices as soon as posts are published was a much longer saga.) I hope this reduces your eyestrain, even at the risk of easier access to stadium news raising your blood pressure.

And speaking of stoking ire, here’s the rest of this week’s news items that didn’t make the daily cut:

  • New Orleans Pelicans owner Gayle Benson is reportedly working on a lease extension with the state of Louisiana to be signed by the end of this year, which could be a 10-year deal with additional five-year options like Benson’s Saints got. No one’s saying a word about the important stuff — how much the state would kick in for arena renovations as part of the deal, and whether Benson would pay any added rent or revenue sharing to help repay the state’s costs — but given that the Pelicans owner has previously said she wants more luxury suites with crushed velour furniture in order to boost the team’s profits, which are currently only about $77 million a year, don’t hold your breath on this “public-private partnership” including a ton of private.
  • A Kansas City labor organization has succeeded in getting enough signatures to put a vote on the November ballot on whether to use city money to fund a new Royals stadium. Mayor Quinton Lucas has declared “the train’s already left the station” and threatened to get the deal signed off on before November, to preclude the public from having a say; the group Missouri Workers Power has threatened to sue to block Lucas from doing so, citing legal precedents where courts struck down legislative actions taken on issues where voter initiatives were pending.
  • North Carolina house speaker Destin Hall is not so crazy about the idea of setting aside a pile of state money to build a Raleigh-area baseball stadium for a proposed MLB expansion team, saying, “Private companies should pay for their own facilities instead of relying on the General Assembly. However, if someone presents a proposal showing that North Carolina taxpayers would get a strong return on the investment, I am willing to consider it.” State senate leader Phil Berger, who lost his primary by 23 votes in March, has been the main advocate of a stadium funding bill; both Hall and Berger are Republicans, while Democratic Gov. Josh Stein said this week, “We’re eager for this opportunity to be considered, and we’ll do all we can to support it.”
  • Some Illinois state legislators don’t seem inclined to revisit tax subsidies for a Chicago Bears stadium no matter what Gov. JB Pritzker says: Comments this week (all from Pritzker’s fellow Democrats) included, “What the Bears wanted was a blank check We not only said no but, excuse my language, hell no,” “If you come to the table in Springfield and you are a liar, it doesn’t bode well for you,” and “The big issue that came about was, Are we going to give billionaires more taxpayer dollars?”
  • A Cuyahoga County councilmember is suggesting using part of the proceeds of a 0.25% sales tax surcharge meant to cover building a new jail and repairing a courthouse to instead pay for repairs and upgrades to the Cleveland Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena, because surely there’s nothing else the county could use that money for. Just not paying for unlimited upgrades ad infinitum and daring the team owners to give up their sweetheart leases — or even threatening to do so in order to get the team owners to agree to a compromise solution — remains an option, guys.
  • Neighborhood leaders around the Chicago Fire‘s proposed stadium at the The 78 site say if the city is going to devote tax money to parking garages for the stadium, it should also kick in for a community benefits agreement to provide funding for transit access, affordable housing, anti-displacement protections, public infrastructure, and support for local businesses. Whether to view this as a vital instrument of democracy to ensure that regular citizens can get dealt into public spending priorities or just a way for developers to buy off local community leaders by cutting them in on the deal is, as always, a reasonable question.
  • Most of the news coverage of the economic impact of the World Cup has disappeared as coverage of the games themselves has taken over, but Seattle’s KUOW did check in on local businesses this week and found that food outlets near the stadium that sell drinks or quick grab-and-go food items are doing great while businesses farther away or those that sell things fans may not crave before or after a soccer match (Vietnamese cookies, vintage clothing) are having a miserable time of it. Yup, checks out!
  • Buffalo Bills ticket prices are too damn high, clearly we need to reduce red tape so the Bills can build more seats.
  • Yes, that Crain’s Chicago Business article claiming Bears tax subsidies weren’t public money was real bad, but as Geoffrey Propheter reminds us, it’s still no Bridge Detroit.
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Pritzker ready to okay Illinois giving public money to Bears, even if everyone’s pretending it’s not public money

access_time personNeil deMause

Crain’s Chicago has another article quoting Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker as saying the ball is in the Chicago Bears owners’ court as far as coming up with a demand for an Illinois stadium bill, just like Pritzker already said last week. The governor went a bit further this time in saying that Bears execs are actually working on cobbling together a new bill — “I think they’re looking at both of the bills that passed — the one in the House, the one in the Senate — hoping to put the provisions of each of those together in a form that they think will pass” — and reiterated that he’s willing to call a special session of the legislature as soon as team officials have all their votes in a row.

That’s all old news, so instead I’d like to take the time to focus in on this paragraph from the Crain’s piece:

Even though the bill didn’t provide any public money for the stadium, many Illinois legislators were cool to the idea of providing property tax breaks to a privately owned football team at a time when constituents are worried about the higher cost of living and struggling with their own taxes.

Look, I get it. There are only so many minutes in the day to report and speed-type reports like these, though at least Crain’s writer John Pletz appears to have a more reasonable one-article-a-day workload. And journalism shorthand is an established thing, so wanting to say “public money” when you mean “direct cash subsidies” is sort of understandable.

Still: Saying the rejected megaprojects bill “didn’t provide any public money for the stadium” but did “provide property tax breaks” is just nonsense, and doesn’t belong in any self-respecting news outlet. Tax breaks are very much public money — they’re calculated as such in an annual “tax expenditure” report by the state comptroller, for one thing — and are equally valuable to team owners’ bottom line, as saving $700 million on your property tax bills is no different from getting $700 million worth of government checks. So while the turn of phrase may seem innocuous, it ends up misleading those readers who are worried about the higher cost of living and struggling with their own taxes. And that’s before even considering that one of the bills previously considered would take sales and hotel taxes collected in a stadium district and use them to pay off stadium bonds, which isn’t a tax break at all, it’s just a government check.

As for where an Illinois stadium would go, the Bears-owned site in Arlington Heights is still the most likely target, though that isn’t stopping other communities from trying to get in on the bidding: In addition to the industrial suburb of McCook, state rep Curtis Tarver has proposed a site at 85th and Lake Shore Drive on the far South Side near the Indiana border, saying that he told Bears CEO about the idea and “he certainly did not tell me that’s the worst idea I’ve seen in my life.” Hope springs eternal, and summers eternal too, at least when a special session is on the table.

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