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Important News: TIF expert Tom Tresser on the push to fund new Bears stadium with taxpayer money
Important News brings you reporting and commentary that is important to our lives from other writers and news sources. In this post, TIF expert Tom Tresser discusses the downside of the rush to use tax dollars to fund a new Chicago Bears stadium. The Chicago Bears organization and owners are a multi-billion dollar enterprises. Do they really need taxpayers to fund their new stadium?
Tom Tresser, an expert in exposing the downside to taxpayers of TIFs, Tax Increment FInancin Districts, applies his expertise to the issue of the push for a new Chicago Bears stadium.
Do they really need it just because they came close for the first time in decades to playing in the Super Bowl.
Although they are beloved, the Chicago Bears’ owners are billionaires.
Shouldn’t they pay for their own stadium without skirmishing into the pocketbooks or hardworking taxpayers?
From the column:
Do you have civic whiplash from all the back-and-forth with the Chicago Bears?
First, they lobbied for a new domed stadium on the lake front – to be heavily subsidized by Chicago taxpayers PLUS free lakefront land. It seemed like Mayor Johnson was ready to give the Bears what they wanted. But, thank goodness for Governor Prtizker – who said “hold the phone” on all talk of public subsidies.
In October of 2025 “Pritzker drew a line at the state being responsible for outright propping up businesses when asked about the Chicago Bears’ hope for $855 million in public funding to support its proposed new Arlington Heights stadium. Pritzker said he was in favor of helping with infrastructure and building roads, not using state funds to build facilities or making a deal that would shield the team from paying property taxes on the new stadium.”
In addition to being an expert on TIF district, Tresser is a Chicago based civic educator and public defender. See www.tresser.com for an overview of my work.
Click here to read the column.
Also check out Tom Tresser’s book, Chicago is not Broke.
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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