Illinois Lawmakers Thumb Noses at Constitution to Impose New Taxes – Wirepoints
June 9, 2026
5 Comments
A mess of uncertainty and litigation is sure to follow.
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With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
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Sounds like Valhalla, except a closer look at all that nice stuff will show you it is not enough. All the roads and Metra assets need to be expanded greatly for game day surge to the cost of hundreds of millions, if not billions. Metra and IDOT won’t kick in anywhere near enough. A simple analogy tells the problem– all that is a four inch pipe when what we need is a twelve inch pipe. The communities served by Metra system wide will fight diversion of funding to one location like that. IDOT will be under enormous pressure from all… Read more »
I drove by the Arl. Hts location the other day on my way to a holiday party. It’s the perfect location. Right off highway 53 bounded by Northwest Highway and Euclid Ave. It has its own Metra stop. It’s hundreds of acres, large enough to accommodate parking and an entertainment complex. There are plenty of bars/restaurants within a 10 minute drive to downtown Arl. Hts or downtown Palatine for pre or post game festivities. It’s in a very safe area too, no worries about being mugged. It also has that part of the community feel that teams desire, like how… Read more »
“The Bears may still ask for money from the state” – that should be a conditional NO. You need to earn it by putting a competitive team on the field. I could care less about the Bears but when their season is over in October it doesn’t help the Chicagoland economy. If they had a winning season more people would go to the bars to watch the game, have Bears parties and playoff parties. Same with all the other Chicago sports teams.
Bears are terrible but people still go to the games and buy the merchandise. What do they care?
A metaphor for Chicago voters.
I don’t think the Bears deserve a new taxpayer funded stadium but I recognize that while sports teams don’t make economic sense, they are more about civic pride. Every Roman provincial or capital city city throughout the Roman Empire had an amphitheater, they’ve found ruins of over 230 of them, and after gladiator battles were banned, and chariot racing became the popular sport, racetracks were built all throughout the empire. These stadiums were a source of local pride. Locals would pack the stadiums to see contestants who traveled across the empire from major cities to small provincial towns just to… Read more »
Nothing new here, this has been obvious for a long while, and his strategy makes sense. AIM real high and you’ll get closer to what you want if you didn’t. Public funding should be off the table at the city, county and state levels. The Bears can surely self finance and help from the cash rich NFL will help.
Nonsense. They have “Arlington Heights in their hip pocket”? So what. AH is broke and has no funds for infrastructure. And does anyone really think the State won’t be needed for somethin? Of course not. And the Chicago legislators will do everything they can to block a Bears move out of the City.