Pritzker, Welch hand off stadium deal’s next move to Bears

Gov. JB Pritzker and House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch on Tuesday put the ball back in the Bears’ court about a pending stadium deal to stay in Illinois.

“The reality is that the Bears have to express themselves about what it is that they want,” Pritzker declared after a bill-signing ceremony for the $56 billion state budget. “We’ve passed, I might add, a bill in the House, passed a bill in the Senate, and now we need the Bears to sort of express what it is in those two bills that they’d like to have happen.”

Added Welch: “I think Illinois is still the place the Bears want to be. I think it’s important that they tell us what they want. I think it’s important that we continue to have those conversations with them. And if we can get to an agreement, then we can ask the legislature to consider.”

A spokesman for the Bears declined to comment Tuesday.

The NFL franchise announced June 5 its board of directors voted to advance a stadium development project in Hammond, Indiana. That came days after a marathon end to the spring legislative session in Springfield, where lawmakers failed to pass legislation giving the Bears a long-term property tax break to build in Arlington Heights.

After the House in late April passed a 376-page version of the so-called megaproject legislation — its 38-page original was backed by the Bears and Pritzker — the NFL club welcomed progress, but said additional amendments were necessary to make the 326-acre former Arlington Park site “feasible.”

The Bears haven’t taken a formal position on the bill that passed the Senate in the wee hours at the end of session June 1, after the House bill that was sent over didn’t have the votes. The Senate bill would enable municipalities above a 70,000 population threshold in Cook County — Arlington Heights and Chicago among them — to set up public municipal stadium authorities of their own.

An hour after getting that bill from the Senate, representatives in the House adjourned, saying they needed more time to digest it all.

Pritzker said Tuesday he’s open to calling legislators back for a special session — they’re otherwise not due to return to Springfield until Nov. 17 for the fall veto session — but reiterated there has to be an agreement for them to consider first.

“You just can’t call people together in a room and say go at it, because who knows how long that would take,” Pritzker told reporters at state offices in downtown Chicago. “What we need is for the Bears to focus on what it is that they want.”

Pritzker confirmed he and others in his administration have received calls from Bears brass since the Indiana announcement.

“They have thoughts, but they have not been clear about what is the bill that they need … and then can they get the votes necessary to get it done in the House and the Senate,” Pritzker added.

Echoing remarks in the ensuing two weeks since adjournment, Welch on Tuesday said he didn’t see the need for special session right now.

“We’re willing to have the conversations to get to an agreement. I’ve said that over and over again since we left session on June 1,” the speaker said. “We are here. We are willing to continue those conversations. I think it’s important that we find out if there is a bill that we can all agree on — the House, the Senate, the governor’s office, the Bears, all the stakeholders involved — before calling members down to Springfield, interrupting their summers. It’s important we do the work here first.”

Welch, like other leaders in the General Assembly, has maintained the door is still open for a Bears stadium in Illinois, and a move across state lines is far from certain. On Tuesday, he pointed to ambiguity in the team’s latest three-sentence statement — that an “exact” stadium site is still to be selected — while an earlier statement in February specifically referenced a site near Wolf Lake.

“The statement that came out here in June was very generic that they’re looking at sites, which tells me they’ve taken a step backwards,” Welch said.