Property tax incentive legislation approved by the Illinois House this week needs serious changes to keep the Chicago Bears from jumping the border to Indiana, and state senators need to move quickly to keep that from happening, Gov. JB Pritzker urged on Friday.
The massive bill sponsored by state Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago, advanced with bipartisan House support, but not in consultation with Pritzker’s office, Senate leaders or even the Bears on some key revisions.
That leaves the ball on the Senate’s side of the field as the clock winds down toward the legislative deadline of May 31.
“There is a need for speed here,” Pritzker said after an unrelated news conference at Northwestern University. “We need to move somewhat expeditiously. I realize the Senate has some work to do, and there will be amendments, no doubt about it.”
While the Bears are due to update the NFL’s stadium committee next week on the status of their yearslong stadium saga, Pritzker predicted the meeting wouldn’t “completely flip the script” in favor of Indiana.
“Having said that, if there is not true progress that gets made, if it isn’t obvious to people that the Senate is moving in the right direction, I think that will make it challenging. But we’re all working together,” Pritzker said.
“I think the Bears want to be in Illinois. I think that’s really what their choice would be, if we can put a bill forward that makes sense,” he said. “We just have to make sure that it works for the Bears as it does for the citizens, the residents of the state of Illinois.”
The so-called megaprojects bill would allow for developers of large projects — like the stadium the Bears have long coveted for Arlington Heights — to negotiate discounted payments in lieu of full property tax bills with local taxing bodies, saving hundreds of millions of dollars over four decades.
Buckner and other Chicago Democrats have long balked not only at ushering the Bears out of the city, but at handing tax breaks to a franchise valued at nearly $9 billion while homeowners statewide struggle to keep up with their property tax bills.
Then Indiana lawmakers passed a slew of taxes to help build a stadium in Hammond in hopes of luring them east, putting pressure on Illinois legislators to keep them within state borders, if not city limits. The team has all but ruled out a future in Chicago.
The Illinois House bill that passed 78-32 calls for half the proceeds from payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT) to be set aside for property tax rebates.
The Bears issued a tepid statement hailing “progress made” in Illinois’ first major legislative step toward a stadium bill, but noted “additional amendments are necessary” to make Arlington Heights a feasible destination.
The team hasn’t publicly stated what changes they want, but it stands to reason that any of their potential PILOT discounts would shrink with half the proceeds diverted to property tax relief funds.
The only Bears squabble that Pritzker would highlight is a 9% amusement tax.
“They had said at the outset that an amusement tax is something that really won’t work, and that they really don’t want to see happen on top of all the other taxes that are imposed here,” Pritzker said. “So we’ll see what can happen in the Senate about that.”
The bill also includes property tax incentives for the “redevelopment of blighted or underused rail yards,” potentially opening the door to a stadium at the South Loop Amtrak yard being eyed by White Sox chairman-in-waiting Justin Ishbia, as well as the long-floated One Central project across the street from Soldier Field.
Those are just a few of the provisions in a 375-page bill that Pritzker suggested needs to be narrowed down, though he has long emphasized PILOT legislation could attract other big developments.
“This bill wasn’t about the Chicago Bears alone. This bill is really about economic development broadly for the state,” Pritzker said.
Separate legislation awaits on the $800 million-plus in public funding the team is seeking for sewers, water mains and other infrastructure around the Arlington Heights site, some of them projects that were already earmarked in state plans regardless of the Bears’ ambitions, Pritzker has said.
The team has committed to spending $2 billion on the project, without any public money for construction of the stadium itself.
The Illinois Senate gavels back in Tuesday.