* Gov. JB Pritzker was asked a ton of questions about the megaproject/Bears bill at an unrelated news conference this morning…

Reporter: Sen. Cunningham told my colleague [NBC Chicago’s Mary Ann Ahern] that the Senate is not in a hurry to pass this bill next week. Are you pushing the Senate to pass the megaprojects bill?

Pritzker: I will say, I think he said that before the vote in the House. But having said that, either way, I can tell you that there is a need for speed here, we need to move somewhat expeditiously. I realize the Senate has some work to do, and there will be amendments, no doubt about it. But, I have to say Senator Cunningham has been a great partner. I think we’ll have a good bill at the end of the process in the Senate and something that will work for the Bears.

[Cross talk]

Reporter: What amendments do [the Bears] want and how much infrastructure- what is the dollar amount, are they looking for the state to pay for?

Pritzker: Well, that’s all being worked out, as you know, now. I mean, I think we’ve been, I think everybody’s understood what the principles are for the Bears and so again, just trying to hone it down. As you know, that bill went from, I don’t know, 30 pages, to 300 and some pages in the House. And it’s not about the pages, but it’s just the amount of things that were kind of tacked on to it. Much of it, by the way, makes a lot of sense. Some of it, I think, for the Bears anyway, didn’t make sense and so well. Again, I don’t want to— I think they’re working that through with the Senate. I don’t want to get involved here in front of all of you. I think there’s just aspects of it that I would, I’ll just, I guess I’ll give you one example. They had said at the outset that an amusement tax is something that really won’t work and that they really don’t want to see happen on top of all the other taxes that are imposed here. So when a 9, I think it’s a 9% amusement tax has been put on by the House. Obviously, that’s something that they didn’t expect, don’t believe that is a good thing for Bears fans or for the Bears Stadium. So we’ll see what can happen in the Senate about that, but that’s one of the things that I know. From the outset, they were hoping not to see in a bill like this.

Reporter: Can you talk about issues you may have with the bill itself?

Pritzker: Well, I mean, again, I think everybody understands that the principle here was to put a bill together that would work for the Chicago Bears. We’re obviously trying to keep the Chicago Bears in the state of Illinois. I also want to remind you that this bill wasn’t about the Chicago Bears alone. This bill is really about economic development, broadly for the state, it’s a megaprojects bill because we have a bunch of megaprojects that we can attract to Illinois if we have the right structure for folks to deal with property taxes. Which, by the way, they do anyway. Just so you know, when companies come to Illinois, they go negotiate with local governments about their property taxes, and if they can’t get a good deal, they go to another state. And so we’re just trying to create a process for that to happen. FYI, out of the 50 states, only 13 states don’t have a PILOT/megaprojects bill. We’re one of those 13 states, so we need to pass something, because it’s good for economic development, and frankly, that was the reason why I introduced the bill way back before the bears were really part of that bill. And now it makes sense. They’re a business in Illinois that wants to expand, and they deserve a hearing, just like any other large project would tax relief part of the bill.

Reporter: Can you talk about the tax relief part of the bill?

Pritzker: I mean, listen, we all want property tax relief. There’s no doubt about that. I think that we want to make sure is that if there’s property tax relief, that it’s meaningful, that it doesn’t penalize the Bears in their desire to stay in the state of Illinois, but that also benefits the particularly the surrounding communities, but also perhaps the larger community of people who own property in the state

Reporter: You talked about speed, but will it be the expense of details which could end up haunting taxpayers down the road?

Pritzker: Yeah, but I want to remind you, Sarah, that this, it’s not like this is a new issue, right? This has been around, people have been talking about this, I think for more than a year. Certainly, I know the Bears have been talking to the legislators for two years I think. So, I don’t think we’re not talking about speed here, or it shouldn’t be a discussion about speed. I think now you’ve got a bill that’s probably has too many items associated with it, or at least some of them that need amending. And there’s an understanding there was already, when it went into the House, that the Bears need to have certain things in the bill and certain things not and so those are going to be guiding the amendments that go through the Senate I believe.

Reporter: There were some Democrats voting against this, and their concern is all this is being done for the Bears or other developers that come in and want some property tax relief at the expense of taxpayers who need things like health care and education and all that. So how do you make sure that everybody’s benefiting?

Pritzker: Well, that’s not true. This is not penalizing health care, for example, in the state at all. And what is true is what we want is more jobs. What we want is economic growth, and we need to be competitive, truthfully. And that’s true of companies across the country. They’re looking where they’re going to move to, and so I’ve worked very hard for the last seven years in office to make Illinois more inviting for businesses, and it’s worked. We’ve attracted a whole lot of folks, but we need to continue to hone our message and deal with the problem that people perceive about property taxes. I believe that’s also true for homeowners in the state of Illinois. That’s why I have been advancing funding and making sure that we’re increasing funding for local public schools. Because guess what? Your property tax bill is mostly driven by the high property taxes for local schools. If the state would get in the game. Remember, we were the worst in the country at funding schools. When I took office, we were 24% of education funding was coming from the state. Average state, 46% comes from the state, so we’ve gotten it almost to 40% now. We’re making a lot of progress. We need local schools to recognize that they’re getting more money from the state and to alleviate the upward pressure on property taxes, and then at the same time, we need to make sure that we’re attracting businesses to the state of Illinois, my opponent, who is running for governor this year, on the Republican side, Darren Bailey, says, well, he doesn’t think that we should do anything to attract the Bears here, and that he does not believe that economic this bill that would promote economic development is a good thing for the state. He’s wrong. We need to do more to make this an attractive state for businesses and not fewer things.

Reporter: What is that infrastructure number for what the Bears want at this point, infrastructure assistance from the state?

Pritzker: It’s the same number that it’s been for since the beginning. I think that the total amount was something like $800 million of infrastructure investment. But remember that much of that is also already in the multi-year plan, or focused on the communities around where the Bears stadium would go in Arlington Heights. So these are projects that would happen anyway. We’re all calling them, ‘Bears infrastructure.’ But the reality is, much of the money, or a good portion of it, is something that already would have happened for the state of Illinois. So I don’t want to overload this thing and make it sound like the Bears, are the ones demanding all this. These are things that the village of Arlington Heights and and other towns and cities around there need in order to advance their cause. For local residents, as well as business.

Reporter: We’re hearing that the NFL is going to put pressure on the Bears next week, are you feeling that same pressure, given that there is another state in the midst, still in play.

Pritzker: Yeah, we’re always competing with other states for businesses, and this is just another example of that. […] The NFL has a meeting next week. It’s not going to completely flip the script, and all of a sudden, on that date you’re going to see Indiana is being chosen if Illinois doesn’t have a bill, having said that, if there is not true progress that gets made, if it isn’t obvious to people that the Senate is moving in the right direction, I think that will make it challenging. But we’re all working together. I think the Bears want to be in Illinois. I think that’s really what their choice would be. If we can put a bill forward that makes sense. They know what that is. I have said before that I created the scaffolding for that. I know that there are legislators who’ve wanted to build on to that scaffolding more than what was originally there, and that’s okay. We just have to make sure that it works for the Bears as it does for the citizens, the residents of the state of Illinois. One last point I want to make from the very beginning and all along here, my number one consideration has been what’s best for the taxpayers of Illinois. You heard me say that on day one, when the bears said they wanted to move, and you’ve heard me say that all along and that’s been my focus. What is the best thing for advancing the interests of the taxpayers, and not only of the Bears or of large businesses. And so that is what we put together in that scaffolding, in that deal that went to the legislature. We want to make sure that whatever comes out of the legislature fills that goal.

Please pardon any transcription errors.