Daily Herald opinion: A ‘fumble’ and an embarrassment: Bears debacle in legislature offers a broader lesson about doing business in Illinois

We know and respect many members of the Illinois legislature from both parties, and we strive to resist popular cynicism questioning the motives and abilities of elected officials. But at times that approach is sorely tested — and the failure of lawmakers to reach a deal by Sunday night to keep the Bears in Illinois is one of the sorest.

It is shameful enough to watch as government leaders ignore, year after year, complaints and ridicule about their rank disregard of the state Constitution’s clear outline for producing state budgets and other key legislation and blithely dump thousands of pages of bills, including the all-important state budget, into lawmakers’ laps in the waning hours of every General Assembly. But the dithering and dawdling that have characterized the discussion of a Bears stadium project in the legislature for more than three years — and seem ultimately to have brought those prospects down with an almost ludicrous thud — takes the issue to a new low.

Study this picture: Scores of stakeholders and lawmakers have been arguing, debating, theorizing and negotiating this issue for years, finally developing a general framework for an option that can meet — even if not fully satisfy — almost every side’s objectives and concerns. And somehow, mere hours before a crucial deadline to potentially ensure the franchise’s commitment to Illinois, some genius comes up with an idea presumably no one had ever thought of or taken seriously before that in the acrid breath of a smoke-filled moment wipes away all that work.

If the idea of municipally owned public stadiums were so appealing, how can it possibly be that it did not materialize until the final hours of a critical session, when it appeared a plan that could keep the Bears in Illinois, though not in Chicago, was poised for approval?

Chicago Democrat Kam Buckner, who has been a tireless manager of talks in the House related to the stadium, said Sunday that the stadium authority idea indeed has “existed in one shape or form for a while” and now, with Chicago Democrats in the Senate balking at the proposed tax mechanism approved in April by the House, “some of those older ideas have come back again.”

One of them came up in 145 pages Chicago Democratic Sen. Bill Cunningham dropped on the Senate floor one hour before the scheduled close of the session. How, one wonders, could Senate President Don Harmon and Gov. JB Pritzker, who considers himself ready to take the political reins of the nation’s political apparatus, not have known before noon Sunday that there were not enough votes in the Senate to approve a measure the governor supported?

But they did not. And so, Cunningham’s city-focused “Hail Mary” passed the Senate and failed to get a vote in the House.

Cunningham had told reporters earlier that the megaproject bill passed in the House had always had “a Chicago problem” because it asked lawmakers to “encourage a business to leave Chicago.” One might well see in the bill passed by the Senate “a suburban problem” for similar political reasons.

Perhaps the biggest lesson of the debacle, however, was evident in the reaction expressed by Holly Connors, a local real estate broker and member of the Touchdown Arlington steering committee that worked to bring the team to the suburbs. While she said that she has learned from following development closely “never to confuse delay with cancellation,” she added that the process involving the Arlington Heights proposal has reinforced attitudes about how challenging it is to do business in Illinois.

Senate dealmakers appear to believe that their proposal pulls the city back into the running for the Bears stadium. More likely, considering the franchise’s repeated statements that only Arlington Heights and Hammond, Indiana, have been under consideration, it could hasten the move out of Illinois. Even if the “older idea” of a stadium authority manages to flame back into life and get pushed through the General Assembly in a special session this summer, the Bears and all the stakeholders face the prospect of months or years more of argument, debate, theorizing and negotiation.

Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tanaglia called the situation “a fumble.” It is that. And an embarrassment, too. The even greater shame is the toll it takes on respect for our political leaders.