Illinois lawmakers miss deadline on Bears stadium plan

Illinois lawmakers worked against a midnight deadline on Sunday in a final effort to craft legislation aimed at keeping the Chicago Bears from relocating to Indiana, but the effort was ultimately sidelined by the state’s budget negotiations. The legislative session concluded without a stadium deal being passed.

The new proposal, discussed in the session's final hours, would have allowed municipalities in Cook County with populations over 70,000—including both Chicago and Arlington Heights—to create a public stadium authority. Under this framework, the Bears would privately finance the construction of a new stadium, but the facility and the land it sits on would be owned by the municipality. Because it would be a publicly owned building, the team would not pay property taxes on it, providing the long-term tax certainty the organization has sought.

This plan emerged after a separate, more expansive "megaprojects" bill, which would have provided the Bears with property tax relief to build in Arlington Heights, failed to gain sufficient support in the legislature. That earlier proposal drew significant criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, with some Chicago...