Pat Quinn

Former Gov. Pat Quinn has been around politics long enough to know the game is just beginning for the Chicago Bears getting a new stadium. 

“For the next month, you will see the Bears in a hurry-up offense,” Quinn said. “They will send an armada of lobbyist to Springfield to try and get their golden deal. We the taxpayers have to be on our toes and be in a prevent defense.” 

The former governor has been outspoken about public funding for sports stadiums and is working to try to get a referendum on Chicago voters’ ballots this fall to gauge their opinion about the issue. 

“The message is no public money for billionaires,” Quinn said. “The Bears have three loaves of bread under each arm, and they want more.” 

He noted that as proposed right now, the Bears would have the ability to sell the naming rights of the new stadium. 

“To give the Bears the naming rights for a stadium on public land is highway robbery,” Quinn said. 

Even though the Bears tout that they are putting $2 billion into the project, Quinn said taxpayers’ cost for the stadium would be “enormous.” 

The Illinois Sports Facility Authority, created by the Illinois General Assembly in 1987 for the purpose of constructing stadiums for professional sports teams, is the proposed resource for $900 million for the publicly owned Bears stadium. Extending the existing 2 percent hotel tax would help finance 40-year IHSA bonds for the project. 

“The bottom line is they have not paid off the debt from 2001 when they dropped a spaceship on Solider Field,” Quinn said. “That debt will not be paid off until 2032.” 

He said city and state dollars going to a stadium instead of public needs is misguided. 

“It’s kind of upside down,” Quinn said. “You will have health care, transportation, CTA, affordable housing all thrown to the side for a colossal tax subsidy. It would be the biggest corporate welfare boondoggle in Illinois.” 

Quinn said sports teams must be told “no” when it comes to public subsidies. 

“I was governor when the Ricketts bought the Cubs,” he said. “They wanted state money to rehab Wrigley Field. I said, ‘That’s not happing.’” 

The former governor found it “embarrassing” that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was at the press conference championing the Bears’ stadium plan when city officials still must make tough funding decisions about any stadium project. 

“All he needed was the pom pons,” Quinn said of Johnson cheerleading for the project. “It’s a failure of the mayor to be a hard-nosed negotiator on behalf of the taxpayers and voters, and wanting to give the Bears another spaceship.” 

Quinn said he is happy that some aldermen are starting to ask hard questions about the proposed project. 

“They are asking if a sports betting facility will be part of the project, about the naming rights, about what the Bears are putting into the project,” Quinn said. “Remember, the Bears just had a stadium built for them 25 years ago.” 

He said the recent vote in Jackson County, Mo., where voters rejected a sales-tax measure to fund renovations to the home of the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and a new ballpark for the Kansas City Royals, should be a message for the Bears. 

“I don’t think Chicago as a city can hardly put the money up,” Quinn said. “It is strung out from the bad deal it made with the Bears in 2001. The hotel tax has not lived up to the funding level that was expected.” 

Quinn said the city would have to pay $300 million to $400 million for the stadium and that the city and state would have to make $1.3 billion in infrastructure improvements for the project. 

“That would take money from the suburbs and Downstate,” Quinn said. “It would take money from other parts of Chicago.”  

Quinn said he plans to work with Chicago aldermen in May to get his proposal for a non-binding referendum on stadium funding on the November ballot. 

He added that he is pleased that Gov. JB Pritzker and other state legislative leaders have not jumped on the stadium bandwagon. 

“The governor is very skeptical of state money going to the project and he acknowledged the Kansas City vote,” Quinn said. “Right now, he would tell the city and mayor ‘no’ faster than you can say ‘Mitch Trubisky.’”