By WMBD TV
PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — State Rep. Sharon Chung said the Chicago Bears have been inconsistent in their messaging.
The Bloomington Democrat made that comment on WMBD News On the Record while talking about some of the biggest legislative items in Springfield, including the budget.
The NFL Team announced it is moving forward with building a new stadium in Hammond, Indiana with the support of $1 billion in taxpayer subsidies. This came after a month’s long battle in the Illinois legislature to make a deal, that centered on property tax relief for what would have a new stadium in Arlington Heights.
That deal failed to pass both chambers, but Chung chalks up some of the blame on the NFL team.
“The Bears at least for me, have given many mixed signals to us in the House and in the Senate,” she said. “They’re sort of saying that they want to move to Hammond but also trying to say that they want to keep the Chicago stadium discussion alive.”
Chung said that wavering position “muddied the waters.”
“For us to be able to vote on [and] pass bills, we want to have sort of clearer messaging and a clearer focus. We have not seen that really, to be honest, from the Bears,” she said.
Another issue for the Downstate Democrat: what does this deal do for Illinoisan who live outside the Chicago Metro area?
The House bill was a mega-projects proposal. It would have provided the means for large businesses to setup across Illinois with a built-in property tax incentive.
Chung said that would have allowed more economic growth in municipalities like Bloomington, Peoria.
“I could defend it to anybody that we could use it as a sort of like economic development tool for all throughout the state, not just the Bears,” she said.
However, the Senate bill, which would allow Cook County municipalities to fight for a stadium, did not include any benefits for Illinois residents south of Interstate 80.
To add to it, the measure passed at 2 a.m. at the end of session. Chung, alongside other house lawmakers, didn’t have the bandwidth to discuss the new legislation.
“We had too many other priorities that we had to pass. We had passed the budget, we had to pass a number of other bills,” she said.
“At least, for my colleagues and I in the house, at that point, a discussion could not happen broadly throughout our caucus while we were on the floor at two, three in the morning.”
Illinois new budget
Gov. JB Pritzker has signed the 2027 financial year budget, totaling $55.9 billion, that Chung said was hard to balance due to federal cuts.
With cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, state lawmakers created something called the Families Receiving Emergency Support for Hunger program.
It allows those who lost their SNAP benefits due to federal cuts to receive a onetime payment for food.
“Those are [the] sorts of things that we’re trying to do to help people, especially when they see these cuts to funding that they’ve come to rely upon,” she said.
The budget was balanced through some new taxes on social media companies, sport wages on prediction markets like Kalshi and other new revenue streams. But it did not increase the sales or income tax.
State lawmakers are also coming to terms that budgeting may get even tighter. With the federal COVID-19 relief money drying up and federal cuts across the board, there is nothing else to replace those funding sources.
“That’s the sort of reality what we have to deal with,” she said.
The budget goes into effect July 1.
WMBD TV first reported this story. You can read the original story online at CIProud.com.
