* Senate President Don Harmon…

The question I don’t think is ‘how this came together last night,’ but that we did anything at all.

There was an enormous undercurrent in our caucus to not do anything. People are worried about neighbors being thrown off of food stamps, people not being able to keep up with inflation because their wages aren’t coming up, losing in their health care because the hospitals and health care providers that serve them are being undercut by Washington. There was no appetite at all to provide public dollars to a $10 billion sports franchise.

As much as we love the Bears, I’m really proud that our caucus came together, and I don’t know, but for the leadership of Senator Bill Cunningham we could have convinced the caucus to make an effort to do this.

Senator Cunningham said it on the floor, and I think it’s true. All of us in our neighborhoods and communities heard basically the same thing: ‘Do whatever you need to do to keep the Bears here, but not one nickel.’

* Gov. JB Pritzker…

I know that the House has said that they’re going to continue to work on this over the summer. I think the question of special session is a question really for the legislators and not for the governor here. They’ve got to come to an agreement about something or other, and then either one can call a special legislative session. I can as well. […]

I will say I have not seen the completed Senate bill or read it, I have to say, nor has my staff, because, as the Speaker said, it came late, and that’s okay. Things happen, and we had a whole lot of things that were, you know, foisted upon the state that they were dealing with yesterday. But the Speaker is going to work hard to make sure that the House is making progress. I will certainly stand alongside them in any way that I can to assist in that endeavor, and our hope is that we’ll be able to provide something to the players that will work. […]

I think again they’re going to be conversations. There’s no final bill here. There is a bill that was proposed by the Senate, a bill and passed by the Senate, a bill that was passed by the House. There are other ways to go about this. I’m not sure, I think that those conversations will be ongoing among the legislators. I’ve set out my principles for everybody. We’ll see whether they get followed, and think what the Bears asked for were embedded in the principles, but not all of what they asked for. We’re not building a private stadium or a stadium for a private company, so that’s my view […]

I don’t want the Bears to leave Illinois, and I’ve worked very hard to make sure that they stay. Indeed, my original focus had been keeping them in the city of Chicago. They weren’t able to find a property to make that happen for them in the city of Chicago. It might be during my term in office, if they decide to go to, actually, they would leave after that, but if they decide to, and they’re building a stadium somewhere else, that might happen. But the reality is, I wasn’t willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money in order to give it to a billionaire-owned family or team, and believe very much that the incentives that we provide for businesses ought to be similar to the incentives we provide to this type of business, as much as an emotional connection as many of us have to the Bears and to keeping them in the city of Chicago or in the state of Illinois. Number one principle is we’re not going to put this on the taxpayers of the state of Illinois.

* House Speaker Chris Welch…

I hate to sound like a broken record, but some of these issues take time, you know. The votes weren’t there to pass a bill for the Bears, but just being about the Bears, the votes weren’t there. A vote just about Springfield wasn’t there. Sometimes we have to figure out a way to get to 60/30 on a bill that one person will sign, you know, I didn’t ask the members their specific issues, I asked where they were, yes or no. In the final hours of the session, the votes weren’t there, and we’re going to continue to have those conversations to find out what the specific issues are, and we’ll get there, and you know we’re here, we’re very much a part of Springfield and the economy and what goes on here, and we want to see something happen, but what will happen will be what is right.

Please pardon any transcription errors.