failed Bears – Six days before the Illinois spring session ended, Sen. Bill Cunningham says frustration built as leaders debated whether to help the Bears at all. By the final stretch, a backup plan aimed at keeping Chicago on equal footing with the suburbs arrived too late—
Six days before the last day of the spring state legislative session, Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, was already laying out why the Bears stadium bill couldn’t make it across the finish line. Cunningham. the chief sponsor of the Senate’s Bears bill. described a fight inside the legislature—and a timing problem that. by his account. got harder to solve the closer lawmakers got to the end of session.
One obstacle was alignment. Every stadium-related measure that passed in Illinois previously relied on Chicago’s mayor and the Illinois governor pulling in the same direction. This time, that didn’t happen. Cunningham also pointed to a deeper political barrier: moving a stadium location within Illinois pits municipalities against each other. He said you “don’t want to do that ‘particularly when the municipality on the losing side has way more members than any other municipality in the state.’”.
Cunningham later told reporters that stadiums that have moved within the same state didn’t involve their state legislatures, arguing that local governments instead picked up the tab.
But as the calendar tightened, the internal mood among senators shifted in a way Cunningham says he couldn’t overcome. On a WSCR radio program last week. he said. “For most of the last few weeks. most senators wanted to do nothing.” Still. he said the group eventually decided to try again because they believed passing something mattered for the Bears’ ability to build a new stadium in Illinois.
“‘We thought it was important to pass something that would make it easier for the Bears to build a new stadium in Illinois,’ so they started putting together a plan,” Cunningham said.
The reasons to stall were everywhere, he said. Some senators didn’t want to help the Bears move to the suburbs. Others didn’t want to help billionaire team owners at all. Some objected to the original House plan and were ready to move on. And even though Cunningham said his constituents mostly wanted to keep the Bears in Chicago. those same residents didn’t want to give the team “a single taxpayer penny” to do it.
Then came the question that dogged the effort: why wait until May 30—the day before the end of session—to pull the plug on the House-passed megaprojects bill. Cunningham’s answer was blunt. He said he held several meetings with caucus members after the House passed its own bill and tested multiple versions of a slimmed-down proposal. but none could pass.
“‘Let’s do nothing’ probably had a plurality of senators behind it,” he said.
By the start of last week, he said it became clear the package he’d been trying to assemble couldn’t move forward. In his telling, the search for something else started quickly after that, but still didn’t produce the needed result.
“So, by midweek, ‘I began floating the Municipal Stadium Authority concept to a handful of senators,’ to see if that could find support.” Cunningham described the idea as a way to land a deal that could survive the political crosswinds.
At the same time, other issues surged to the center of the discussion. The governor. Cunningham said. had warned the Senate in advance that this could happen—pushing for the legislation to be wrapped up well ahead of the end of session to avoid getting caught in last-minute session crunch. Cunningham said that by Friday, May 29, he believed the concept had enough support to start drafting a bill.
But the bill didn’t surface until late Sunday night, before session was previously scheduled to adjourn.
“I regret that we got to it as late as we did. but we simply had bigger fish to fry. ” Cunningham said—citing the budget and other topics. He also said he discussed the concept with House Bears bill sponsor Rep. Kam Buckner midweek, and that Buckner was generally supportive of trying again. Yet Cunningham said the timing never worked for the House to act.
His timeline was broadly confirmed by other insiders. When asked why a backup plan hadn’t been formed weeks before, Senate President Don Harmon’s spokesperson said the question would be “best addressed to the Bears.”
Cunningham and other legislators had been talking for a while about how rumors that the football team had second thoughts about leaving Chicago damaged the legislative push to help the Bears move to the suburbs. In that environment. Cunningham said the new proposal was designed to “level the playing field” for Arlington Heights and Chicago—essentially trying to ensure the city would be on equal footing with the suburbs.
It still arrived too late.
Then. on Friday. the Bears issued a statement that they will “advance our stadium development project” in Hammond. Indiana. though no site was specified. More importantly for the negotiations that had consumed the session. a Bears official spoke by phone with both Cunningham and Buckner before the announcement. The legislators leading the Bears talks said they were told by team President/CEO Kevin Warren that the Bears looked forward to continuing the discussion about keeping the team in Illinois.
It is, in the words that follow from the legislative wreckage, a saga that won’t die—just not fast enough to match the session calendar’s deadline.
Illinois Bears stadium bill Bill Cunningham Don Harmon Kam Buckner Kevin Warren Hammond Indiana Arlington Heights Chicago mayor WSCR Municipal Stadium Authority