Springfield’s stalled drive for Bears stadium legislation and lingering questions about the potential playing field in Hammond, Indiana, leave Chicago as the team’s best play for a new dome.
That’s according to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who had plenty of cause for end-zone celebrations after Illinois lawmakers advanced several of his top priorities at the end of their spring session and just as importantly spiked a bill that would have cleared the Bears’ path out of Soldier Field to the suburbs.
“There’s no plan in Hammond. There’s none of that in the suburbs,” Johnson told WBEZ and the Sun-Times on Tuesday. “We are already further along than any other site that might even be considered.”
Johnson also can take some credit for clearing the path for a new digital advertising tax that made it into the state budget, along with a social media tax mirroring the one his administration implemented last year — evidence that he’s finally breaking the line of scrimmage in Springfield, he says.
“I’ve called for progressive revenue in Springfield from the very time in which I was sworn into this seat,” Johnson said. “We are now finally seeing the results of our hard labor and our advocacy.”
Chicago Democrats reluctant to lose the Bears didn’t need much convincing from the mayor to tank the megaproject bill the team has long sought, but the 11th-hour public stadium pitch approved by the Illinois Senate validated his 2024 pitch for a new dome south of Soldier Field, Johnson said.
“Not only did we have a publicly owned stadium that expanded green space, we were moving forward with conversations around the terms of an agreement,” Johnson said of his administration’s dealings with the team since he and Bears president Kevin Warren pushed for the lakefront.
“That’s been ongoing, and the hope is that Springfield, after what they’ve done in this last session, that Springfield engages with the Bears, with the city and all stakeholders collectively, to come up with a… plan that shows the viability of what we’ve already put forward,” he said, unfazed by Warren’s stated timeline of announcing their destination by early summer.
The new bill sponsored by state Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, would allow Chicago, Arlington Heights and other Cook County municipalities with populations of 70,000 or more to create stadium financing authorities and negotiate with teams. Johnson called it “a framework that places Chicago right in the mix to keep the Bears… and that’s what we’ve always said that we needed.”
Johnson wasn’t the only official heartened by Springfield’s inaction. Indiana Gov. Mike Braun said Tuesday he expected it to result in a team announcement “in less than a month” that they’ll break ground in Hammond, where Hoosier lawmakers have authorized a slew of new taxes to help fund a stadium.
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun suggested it was a no-brainer for the Bears to move to “a place that runs like Indiana, triple-A credit rating, where you get a lot more stadium built for the money you’re going to invest, where you’ve got friendly guidelines to have a business, in general, and where you’re not going to be taxed out of existence.
“I think that is what they’re actually looking at,” Braun said at an unrelated news conference in Indianapolis.
Johnson, meanwhile, argued “there’s no comparison. There’s no traffic study in Arlington Heights. There’s no environmental study in Hammond. There are no terms of agreement.”
As for other downstate wins, Illinois lawmakers authorized the city to impose a tax on digital ads seen by Chicagoans. It’s unclear how much money the digital ad tax will rake in, but Johnson has long called for the measure to help address the city’s more than $1 billion budget gap and struggling school district.
Johnson, with dozens of other Illinois mayors, was also successful in fending off Pritzker’s proposed cut to the share of income taxes local municipalities receive, known as the Local Government Distributive Fund.
“I was able to lead a delegation from the most northern part of the state to the southern part of the state, a bipartisan approach to protect the local government distributed fund,” Johnson said.
Johnson has been heavily criticized for his Springfield agenda, which hasn’t yielded the types of new progressive revenue he campaigned on winning.
Gov. JB Pritzker recently joined the chorus, slamming Johnson for “show[ing] up in May” with “a bunch of demands”
“It’s unfortunate that’s happened most years,” Pritzker said. “This is kind of typical, the mayor has shown up every spring at the end of session.”
On Tuesday, Johnson rebuffed the insult.
“The last couple of sessions, quite frankly, it came down to what the final hours before the budget was actually passed. I mean, some could argue that I was there too early,” he said, chuckling.
