Rarely has a Chicago mayor with so much at stake traveled to Springfield with such little hope of getting what the mayor wants.<\/p>\n
Mayor Brandon Johnson wants a bigger cut<\/a> than Gov. JB Pritzker is offering from a state fund that provides money for Chicago and other municipalities to spend as they wish. Pritzker so far is holding his ground on that.<\/p>\n Johnson wants additional funding for Chicago Public Schools. He wants a new statewide digital advertising tax. He wants city authority to levy a $1 fee on deliveries other than groceries and medication.<\/p>\n And \u2014 least promising of all \u2014 Johnson evidently hopes to revive the idea of a publicly owned stadium for the Chicago Bears in Chicago.<\/p>\n That\u2019s right: With only three weeks left before the General Assembly adjourns, Johnson appeared in Springfield on Wednesday touting an idea that was dead on arrival the very day he unveiled it \u2014 in a splashy Soldier Field news conference, standing arm in arm with Bears\u2019 ownership \u2014 two years ago.<\/p>\n That was the bold idea to build a new football stadium just south of Soldier Field \u2014 the proposal that died almost from the day it was unveiled. The Bears were expecting some $2.5 billion in state financing and infrastructure, yet hadn\u2019t consulted with Pritzker before publicly announcing their plans.<\/p>\n The misstep marked a low point of Johnson\u2019s term as mayor. The Bears quickly moved on. And since then, they have made clear the choice in location is between Arlington Heights and Hammond.<\/p>\n Yet there Johnson was this week, calling for a taxpayer-owned Chicago Bears football arena, even though the House has passed a megaprojects bill custom-designed for an Arlington Heights stadium. And while the Senate likely will amend certain major parts \u2014 especially a proposed new 9% amusement tax that the Bears are said to reject \u2014 Pritzker last week threw his support behind the legislative momentum<\/a>.<\/p>\n The House plan is \u201cwithin the framework\u201d of what the Bears might accept, Pritzker said. In almost the same breath, he called for quick action on an amended plan \u2014 so the state doesn\u2019t lose the Bears to Indiana on Pritzker\u2019s watch.<\/p>\n \u201cSoon is what I would say is the best thing to do, in part because, look, we\u2019re competing, right? We have to be competitive here,\u201d Pritzker told reporters last week. \u201cWe want to make sure that the Bears see Illinois as the best alternative for them, and that they have something that they can make a decision about that\u2019s in front of them.\u201d <\/p>\n Johnson is having none of that. If he heard Pritzker\u2019s remarks \u2014 and it\u2018s mayoral malpractice if he\u2019s unaware \u2014 evidently he\u2019s not believing his lying ears.<\/p>\n \u201cWe already know the governor doesn\u2019t like the bill,\u201d Johnson said of the House-passed bill during a Springfield news conference Wednesday. \u201cThe Bears do not like the bill. There are members of the Senate caucus, both sides of the aisle, that do not like the bill. So we have a bill that no one likes that will give, potentially, property tax relief to a major corporation.\u201d<\/p>\n The House bill may not be perfect for the Bears. But the team in its only public statement has called for \u201cadditional amendments,\u201d not outright rejection.<\/p>\n The Senate could yet torpedo the House plan with a total rewrite \u2014 though time is quickly running out. We\u2019ll know soon, and any senator considering misadventures that might put a May 31 deadline in jeopardy \u2014 the traditional close of the legislative session \u2014 will need to contend with Pritzker or his staff, who are driving to bring this discussion to a close.<\/p>\n Whatever the House-Senate differences may be, a 78-32 vote for House passage \u2014\u00a0with most members of the Chicago delegation voting yes<\/a> \u2014 is a sign of strong support, including among lawmakers from Chicago, for a megaprojects bill designed to help the Bears leave Chicago and move to Arlington Heights. <\/p>\n There is no indication Johnson has the clout to prevent that from happening.<\/p>\n When I checked with Johnson\u2019s seniors adviser, Jason Lee, about the city\u2019s objectives in the megaprojects talks recently, he gave an impression of deep involvement and a list of concerns, ranging from the repurposing of Soldier Field to help with covering debt taken on to refurbish the stadium in 2003.<\/p>\n But when I asked the governor\u2019s staff this week if Johnson or his emissaries have been involved in the megaprojects talks over the last few weeks, here\u2019s what spokesman Matt Hill emailed back: \u201cThe working group on the megaprojects bill has been the Governor\u2019s Office, Bears, House, Senate, and Arlington Heights.\u201d<\/p>\n David Greising is president of the Better Government Association.<\/p>\n Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here<\/a> or email letters@chicagotribune.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rarely has a Chicago mayor with so much at stake traveled to Springfield with such little hope of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":885635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2070],"tags":[10654,374,8232,692,391,2493,7,114895,6],"class_list":["post-885634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-bears","tag-arlington-heights","tag-bears","tag-brandon-johnson","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-bears","tag-chicagobears","tag-football","tag-megaprojects-bill","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116538448552355209","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/885635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}