Calm deliberation can bring a solution on Sears

The mantra that should be coming out of Springfield this week and next related to a proposal for tax breaks for Sears Holdings Corp. is a simple one: Cooler heads.

It should be repeated by all sides as they dig seriously into the issues critical to keeping Sears in Illinois and ensuring that all taxing bodies to which Sears is beholden are treated fairly.

And let’s make it clear from the outset that those two outcomes are paramount and equally critical.

Sears has been a Chicago-area fixture practically from its beginnings as a retail giant and a valued corporate citizen of the suburbs for more than two decades. Even with the Economic Development Agreement that wooed the company to Hoffman Estates from downtown Chicago, the company has contributed $250 million in property taxes alone to local agencies and has generated untold millions more in economic benefits through infrastructure improvements, construction, salaries, payroll taxes, charitable giving and other activities related to the simple fact that it employs 6,100 people.

Anyone who would dismiss that kind of local impact with an indifferent “we’d like them to stay here” is just not appreciating the facts.

But likewise, Sears benefits from its presence here. Tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks have helped keep it competitive, proximity to O’Hare International Airport gives the company and its executives easy access to the entire world, and a network of affluent, safe, education-minded and innovative communities has provided a well-educated, hardworking and highly motivated pool from which to build that force of 6,100 employees.

So, the company ought to be expected to support the region that provides such fertile and productive conditions. Unfortunately, the dialogue of late has been spiked with anger, distrust and resentment, and the result has been a mistaken appearance of confrontation between Sears and one school district, Carpentersville Community Unit District 300. The school district’s position is easy to understand. It has been wrestling even more than many other suburban school systems with the demons of Illinois’ and the nation’s economic crisis, and it has been sacrificing millions of dollars a year toward the health of the Sears economic engine.

But it is not by any means alone in that. Indeed agencies as diverse as Barrington Township, Elgin Community College, the Northwest Mosquito Abatement District, the village of Hoffman Estates, the Hoffman Estates Park District and more have all given up some portion of taxes to support the EDA, of which Sears is the dominant beneficiary.

Don’t forget that they’ve all received something because of Sears, too. District 300 is correct to note that if the EDA were extended just as it is, the district would lose $14 million a year in abated tax revenue. But if Sears goes away, the district will lose not only that money, but also the substantial yearly contribution it receives even under the EDA.

Nor does the EDA have to be extended just as it is, and state Sens. Dan Kotowski, a Park Ridge Democrat, and Pamela Althoff, a McHenry Republican, and Rep. Fred Crespo, a Hoffman Estates Democrat, have demonstrated distinct leadership by intervening to, first, tone down the rhetoric of this emotionally charged conflict, then try to broker solutions.

Cooler heads. From all indications, they are beginning to take over in the contentious debate over incentives for Sears. If the parties keep invoking the phrase, calm deliberation can ensure that Sears remains in the Northwest suburbs, that the company commits to substantial employment here and that all affected parties benefit appropriately.

And that result will be a better deal for everyone.