Bears Drama

The senate said "Sure," but the house said, "We can screw this up even more!" 

We had a heck of a time understanding this part:

• Illinois senators tossed up a desperation heave by passing a bill that would authorize Cook County municipalities with populations of at least 70,000 to create their own financing authorities for publicly owned stadiums that would eliminate the Bears’ potential property tax bills. But their House colleagues didn’t take up the measure for a vote, leaving the stadium saga in limbo once again.

So the Bears would pay for their own stadium, something along the lines of $2 billion or so, which we fully support. 

Then the Bears would "gift" the stadium to the local financing authority (making it "publicly owned") and thereby relieving themselves of the stadium property tax bills (though they'd be on the hook for any other structures built on the Arlington Race Track property, i.e. hotels, restaurants, casinos, etc).

The distribution of stadium revenues is less well defined for the Arlington Heights location while the Indiana people have said the Bears can keep all of that money.

So a lot more bribes and favors have to be worked into a possible deal, sometime before summer - which is twenty days away, give or take a couple weeks.