What’s next for Bears stadium talks after General Assembly punts on deals?

SPRINGFIELD — Just before the sun rose over the Capitol dome Monday morning, legislators heaved a Hail Mary pass to the end zone to try to keep the Bears in Illinois.

It fell incomplete.

Now negotiations to prevent the NFL franchise from bolting across state lines are headed to overtime this summer.

After the state Senate’s 37-17 vote to allow municipalities like Arlington Heights and Chicago to create their own local public stadium authorities — in a bid to prevent the team’s relocation to Hammond, Indiana — the House punted on the bill, adjourning at 4:40 a.m. without taking a vote.

Internal polling of the supermajority House Democratic caucus indicated the measure didn’t have the votes to pass.

“I’m proud of our House. I’m proud of the processes that let us get big things done,” Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch said in closing remarks on the House floor early Monday, just after a $56 billion state budget was approved.

“Sometimes that takes a little time,” he added. “Sometimes that means we need to take the time to fix it in the House. There’s a lot of work still ahead of us. We’ll continue discussions on a number of issues, including our approach to the Bears stadium question this summer.”

Unless a special session is called, lawmakers aren’t scheduled to return to Springfield until November, long after the Bears previously outlined timeline for a decision on the team’s next home.

Will the Bears wait?

Team officials previously indicated they wanted first to see what Illinois lawmakers would do, before making a decision this spring or summer about building a stadium on their 326-acre Arlington Park property, or across state lines.

Since December, the team has been completing due diligence on a stadium site near Wolf Lake in Hammond. Competing legislation to create a public stadium authority in Northwest Indiana sailed through that state’s legislature in February.

“We will finalize our evaluation of both Arlington Heights and Hammond, and remain on the late spring/early summer timeline that we have previously communicated,” a Bears team statement released after the House adjourned early Monday reads. “We will provide an update when we have a decision to share.”

The latest proposal in Springfield — drawn up and advanced on the Senate side in a mere 24 hours — was an alternative to the so-called megaproject legislation the Bears lobbied for at the Capitol for more than three years. The original bill — and its Payment in Lieu of Taxes financing mechanism — was anathema to Chicago-based legislators and progressives in the Senate who were reluctant to vote to have the team leave the city for the suburbs, or to help subsidize a corporation worth an estimated $9 billion.

The House passed that bill by a 78-32 tally on April 22. It contained the structure for a 40-year-long property tax break the Bears long sought at the Arlington Park site. But the 376-page version of the legislation also contained a property tax sweetener and other economic development incentives for big ticket projects across the state — provisions seen as unwieldy and unworkable for many skeptical senators.

During lawmakers’ hurry-up offense to pass some type of Bears legislation in the wee hours of the morning, it was immediately unknown whether the public stadium authority measure that cleared the Senate was backed by the stakeholders it was intended to benefit: the Bears, Arlington Heights and Chicago.

“I have talked to all of them,” state Sen. Bill Cunningham, the bill sponsor and lead Senate negotiator on stadium talks, told reporters late Sunday. “I can’t tell you that they said they were supportive of it. They said they were interested to see the language (of the bill).”

Cunningham’s 145-page bill dropped at 11 p.m. Sunday — just an hour before the scheduled end of the General Assembly’s spring session. Per legislative rules, a vote after midnight would normally have triggered a three-fifths majority to pass — 36 in the Senate and 71 in the House — but because the bill contained no immediate effective date, a simple majority would have sufficed.

Mere hours after adjournment, Gov. JB Pritzker, Senate President Don Harmon and Welch returned to the Capitol building to manage the fallout.

The Democratic trio touted successes on their legislative agendas, such as approval of the budget, but they ended up playing defense for much of a 45-minute media availability with reporters who peppered them with questions about what didn’t get approved.

“I really want businesses to stay here and grow. I really want businesses to be attracted to the state of Illinois, and I’ve been working at that every single day,” Pritzker said from his office at the Capitol. “But I want you to understand that the work that the legislature did on this was work in earnest to try to keep one of those businesses here, to do everything that they could, but also to recognize that the most important things that are happening right now are about what’s happening to average everyday families in the state of Illinois.”

Harmon was more blunt in his assessment.

“The question, I don’t think, is how this came together last night, but that we did anything at all. There was an enormous undercurrent in our parties to not do anything,” said Harmon, of Oak Park. “People were worried about neighbors being thrown off food stamps, people not being able to keep up with inflation, losing their health care … There was no appetite at all to provide public dollars to a $(9) billion sports franchise, as much as we love the Bears.”

“All of us in our neighborhoods and communities heard basically the same thing: ‘Do whatever you need to do to keep the Bears here, but not one nickel,’” Harmon added.

Welch said House Democrats favored the wider-ranging bill with statewide economic development tools — not one solely focused on the Bears.

Representatives didn’t have time to digest the Senate bill — which came over at 3:40 a.m. — but vowed to review the proposal and continue talks with his caucus and the Bears to “get it right.”

“The Bears are a very important part of Chicago. They are an iconic institution. We would love to keep them in the state of Illinois,” said Welch, of Westchester. “We cannot ignore that as part of the conversation. But what we do here is also about priorities. And the priorities in the House are dictated by my members. And what they’re talking about are the affordability issues.”

The state leaders were noncommittal about whether a special session is needed.

“The Speaker’s going to work hard to make sure that the House is making progress,” Pritzker said. “I will certainly stand alongside them in any way that I can assist in that endeavor, and our hope is that we’ll be able to provide something for the Bears.”