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Rep. Mary Beth Canty urges careful review of Bears/Arlington Park proposals, outlines alternative to TIFs
Summary
At a Prospect Heights legislative review, Rep. Mary Beth Canty criticized late-night incentive bills tied to a possible Chicago Bears move to Arlington Park and proposed a 'mega development' board to protect local taxing bodies and distribute incremental payments to schools, libraries and municipalities in real time.
Representative Mary Beth Canty, who represents the 54th District, told a Prospect Heights audience that any plan for Arlington Park must be scrutinized for how it is paid for and how local taxing bodies will be protected.
"When Arlington Park and Churchill Downs decided that they would no longer operate a racetrack and they would sell their property," Canty said, the possibility of a Bears stadium drew decades of discussion. She described the site as about "326 acres" and said that as a vacant lot it currently generates "about $3,600,000 a year" in property taxes. Canty said some incentive proposals discussed during the legislative session would add a separate special payment that could bring combined annual payments into the "neighborhood of $8 to $12,000,000 a year."
Canty criticized a late senate filing and the speed of last-day negotiations. "At 11PM on May 31 ... a bill gets dropped by the senate," she said, noting that the senate-dropped bill "passed the senate" but "did not pass out of the house." She warned that short negotiation windows make it harder for affected taxing bodies to fully assess trade-offs.
To give local governments a stronger voice, Canty described a legislative alternative she helped design: a "mega development" board composed of representatives from each taxing body on the property tax bill, with a weighted vote so school districts, libraries and other local taxing entities can meaningfully influence the deal. Under her description, the plan would pay participating taxing bodies more quickly, rather than funneling incentives through a long TIF-like account with distributions only decades later.
Canty said the change is intended to prevent the historical problem where a municipality's decision effectively overrides other local taxing jurisdictions. "So your school districts can say, this is not a good move for us ... but if your municipality thinks it is good, they get to override everyone," she said, arguing the weighted-board approach would better distribute both revenue and negotiating power.
The representative said the story "is not over" and emphasized the need for public input and detailed studies before any final incentives are approved. The session did not produce a local decision; lawmakers described legislative negotiations at the state level that remain unresolved.
