Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) criticized Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, saying the mayor has “no plan” to keep the National Football League’s Chicago Bears in the city after three years in office.The blunt rebuke comes as the Bears weigh where to build a new stadium. The NFL is currently considering two sites: Arlington Heights, Illinois, and Hammond, Indiana, a city right across the Illinois border and about 23 miles from the Bears’ current home, Soldier Field. While many Chicago leaders want the team to remain in the city, momentum has increasingly shifted toward the suburban and out-of-state proposals.Pritzker said Johnson has failed to present a serious effort to keep the Bears in Chicago.
“He has come up with no plan at all about how the Bears would end up in the city of Chicago, so that’s problematic,” Pritzker said. “I’d love them to be in the city, but we are three years in [the Johnson administration], and he still has no plan. The Bears have said publicly — again — that they have now only two options, and that’s the state of Indiana and Arlington Heights.”
The governor also accused Johnson of waiting too long to engage state leaders on the issue.
“The mayor has shown up every spring — at the end of session — to pronounce what he would like to see happen, and, as you know, I present my budget to the legislature in February, so that seems like a good time period to come talk to the governor’s office,” Pritzker said. “We have seen almost nothing out of the mayoral administration here on that subject, or, really, any other, so to show up in May and have a bunch of demands seems late in the game.”
