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The team offered economic projections last year that the project would generate a $9 billion impact, with nearly $4 billion in overall labor income, with 48,000 jobs, almost 10,000 of them “long-term” positions; and $16 million in annual tax revenue. But additional studies have not been forthcoming while the team has been pursuing legislation to set financial conditions for the development. The team says it can’t come up with detailed projections without certainty over its taxes and public subsidies for infrastructure like roads and utilities.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Illinois, Chicago and the Bears are three of the most screwed up entities in existence. The incompetence level in play here is off the charts. Somehow they’ll screw this entire thing up so that in the end, nobody wins.
Note that the article is deliberately centered around ‘Bears Stadium’ rather than free billions$$ taxpayer TIF grants for development of privately-owned residential and retail (which will cost local property taxpayers additional 100’s of millions$ over 40 years, to subsidize mandated social services provision).
The Regime In Power is excellent at the Skill of Spin.
I sure the Bears have only put an option down on Arlington Height racecourse for a couple $mil and have NOT purchased property. That’s how these deals usually work.
Wrong. Why make a comment that’s completely false? What’s the purpose of lying?
Who are they trying to kid with these numbers? 48,000 jobs? Pleeease! And only $16 million in taxes generated from all this “impact”. Even Illinois legislators who rightly deserve their reputations as not being too bright will laugh at these projections. And the public, which has been living with the Bears all these decades can figure out an NFL team doesn’t generate that level of economic pop. As they have so any times on past stadium boondoggles, the Bears are just looking sillier and sillier.
Quick! Get another Task Force going. Just like all the 100’s already out there. The property task force did such a great job I don’t know what to do with all the money I’m saving. Not!