Conehead Giveaway

Conehead is set to give away a ton of money that Chicago doesn't have:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson on Wednesday cracked the door open to providing a public subsidy to build a new $1.2 billion White Sox stadium in the South Loop, provided the team and the developer “put some skin in the game.”

  One day after Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf and his entourage traveled to Springfield to begin the uphill battle for the $1 billion in state funding, Johnson was considerably more receptive to the concept of using city tax revenue for new stadiums — either for the Sox or the Bears — than Gov. J.B. Pritzker and some legislators have been.

So Fata$$ is making noise that the Sox aren't getting tax dollars, so Conehead is stepping up to give away the store? And where is this money coming from?

• Those sources include a tax increment financing district created to bankroll the infrastructure improvements needed to ready the site for development; the 2% hotel tax increase used to renovate Soldier Field; and a new sales tax overlay district that would require the city and state to forgo sales tax revenue generated within the boundaries of the project.

So (A) a TIF fund that drains money from city coffers. (B) Instead of reducing the tax levy that was used to fund the Soldier Field rehab, keep it in place for another stadium. And (C) a new sales tax overlay used solely to fund the proposed stadium....which means everything that would have gone to the General Fund, will go only to the stadium, and all that missing tax revenue will have to be made up somewhere else. 

Hello Tax Hike!