Daily Herald opinion: The stadium ‘bye week’: Stadium development is important, but getting it right amid other priorities is key

During a Sept. 30 town hall appearance in Arlington Heights, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch offered an assessment of the likelihood of a legislative deal on a Bears stadium proposal during the then-approaching fall veto session.

“I think that there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done,” he said.

With half the veto session now behind them, that statement seems to hold just as true heading toward the end of October as it did at the end of September.

And that may not be a bad thing.

At the outset, there is very little appetite anywhere in the General Assembly for financially helping a Bears franchise worth billions of dollars to build a new stadium, especially with forecasts of tight budgets and funding shortfalls on the horizon. The $5 billion business and entertainment development envisioned for the former Arlington Park site has economic ramifications for the entire region and the state, of course, so lawmakers have more to consider than just the Bears’ bottom line. And, the point is just that — that they have a lot to consider.

A megaprojects bill already on the table offers some reasonable alternatives by providing a structure for negotiations aimed at protecting suburban stakeholders while providing the Bears a predictable framework for property taxes. The team supports the legislation, whose sponsors include Democratic state Representatives Mary Beth Canty and Nicole Grasse, both of Arlington Heights, but many lawmakers from both sides of the aisle remain unconvinced. It seems far from certain that supporters can generate the necessary two-thirds approval from the House and the Senate in the final three days of the session at the end of the month.

Nor, in truth, should they be concentrating on that.

We are as eager as anyone to see shovels in the ground at Arlington Park. But it has to be done in the right way, and the simple fact is that more urgent work faces the General Assembly this month. Restructuring mass transit must be Job 1 for the final three days of the veto session. If lawmakers are going to be working on complex financial strategies, that's where they should be devoting their time rather than trying to jam through two difficult issues with long-lasting consequences in three days.

Legislative leaders have indicated as much.

In addition to Welch’s reluctance, Gov. Pritzker said the stadium development issue needs more study “perhaps going into the next session.” Senate President Don Harmon told Capitol News Illinois the veto session should be looked at as a “bye week.”

Complicating matters, Chicago Democratic state Rep. Kam Buckner threw a wrench in the works last week with a proposal that would make it harder for the Bears to move to Arlington Park, but also harder for them to build on the lakefront. In many ways, it is more distraction than a serious bill. What it does do, though, is emphasize Welch’s point that the legislature has a lot of work still to do to reach agreement on how to provide support, if at all, to the Bears' proposal.

The immediate focus of the General Assembly must be on the transit fiscal crisis. The key for the suburbs and the Bears is to continue to work with the team and with lawmakers to reach a deal that will benefit all stakeholders. If they need to let that process melt into the spring session to do that and get it right, so be it.