MOORE’S SUMMARY: As lawmakers barrel towards their May 31 adjournment deadline, there’s been little movement in negotiations over a megaprojects bill that would clear the path for the Chicago Bears build a new domed stadium in Arlington Heights – and not across the state line in Hammond, Indiana.
‘SAME POSITION’: “We’re in the same position we were before, meaning Cunningham is talking to Senators,” Gov. JB Pritzker told me and my colleague Ben Szalinski in a short interview outside his second floor Capitol office Wednesday afternoon. “Obviously, I’ve had a few calls from folks. But there’s lots of ticky tack little things that are being worked out.”
WHY IT MATTERS: Last week, we reported that there was “substantial opposition” to the legislation in the Senate, with concerns ranging from the Bears’ apparent reengagement with the city of Chicago on a lakefront stadium — something the team later chalked up to a misunderstanding and dismissed — to the mechanics of the payment in lieu of taxes tool, among other issues.
Sources close to negotiations confirmed that progressive lawmakers present a challenge to getting the bill out of the chamber. In private meetings, some have questioned the prioritization of legislation that would allow megaproject developers to negotiate and lock in a lower property tax payment for decades.
Progressive lawmakers are still fighting in the waning days to add or increase taxes on certain businesses and billionaires, though none of the roughly $4 billion worth of ideas they’ve pitched were included in Pritzker’s proposed budget.
‘LOT OF QUESTIONS’: Complicating matters is that “there’s no one thing” that’s at issue, said state Sen. Celina Villanueva, D-Chicago, a top progressive lawmaker.
“I don’t think that it’s just progressives, I think that there’s a lot of questions surrounding that proposal, and I think that there’s not enough answers that are being given, and answers that assuage the thoughts of the legislators right now in the chamber,” said Villanueva, who counts herself as “a skeptic” of the bill.
State Sen. Robert Peters, D-Chicago, whose district encompasses Soldier Field, said his “biggest hold up” is “making sure that the front yard to our state — the Museum Campus, Soldier Field, McCormick Place, Grant Park — is taken care of.
“The second one is the Bears throughout all of this have been hard to trust with the games that they’ve played,” Peters said. “You’re negotiating with people who have done a terrible job negotiating.”
BEARS BILL? Crains Chicago Business reported Wednesday that lawmakers are considering scaling back the megaprojects bill to limit the program to the Bears’ project in Arlington Heights while continuing negotiations on the statewide deployment of the tool.
A source close to negotiations confirmed that the idea “has come up a few times.”
And eyebrows were raised when state Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, filed a gut-and-replace amendment to her bill creating the Capital Area Tourism Authority and Capital City Downtown Medical District to facilitate economic development in two areas of Springfield. That provision had been included in the 377-page megaprojects bill that passed the House in April. The move could indicate she’s not confident the Springfield-centric proposal will make it into the megaprojects bill.
But Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, the top negotiator on the megaprojects bill in the Senate, said they “continue to discuss possible changes” to the bill that passed the House, “but no decisions have been made.”
With four session days left, Cunningham said they “still have time to put something together” and that he hoped to have “a little more clarity tomorrow.”
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