* Rep. Kam Buckner appeared on Robin Johnson’s Quad Cities public radio show to talk about why it’s taking so long to get a Bears stadium deal…

I just remind people that this process, while it seems like it’s been forever, it’s been shy of four years. It’s been three and a half years since the Bears purchased Arlington Racetrack.

And just to put that into context, when you look at the deal that Kevin Warren made when he was at the Minnesota Vikings in the Twin Cities at U.S. Bank, that deal took about six years, and it included a bunch of fits and starts, location changes. At one point, they were going to go to a suburb of Minneapolis, you know, then they moved back into where… the Metrodome was. Then they moved back to another spot, which is downtown, where they are right now. They actually bought land in two different places before they moved forward.

If you look at the deal out in Las Vegas, which Allegiant Stadium is the crown jewel of the NFL’s real estate portfolio right now, that also took about six and a half years, and that was a a situation where everybody was on the same page, unlike how we started out here in Illinois. And even with that, it took six and a half years and a special session of the Nevada Legislature to get it done. So these things take some time.

And frankly, I’ll remind folks of this, Robin, it’s like if you’ve got children who always have lived with you. The moment they step out to be independent and to either buy a home or rent a home, they realize that lights cost money, and gas costs money, and you know, there’s a a learning curve that comes that goes with that. The Bears are a foundational NFL franchise, but they’ve never owned their own space. And so, what I would say is while some people have pushback on the team, and I’ve had some frustrations with them both publicly and privately with the way they’ve operated, this is a new space for them. They’ve never tried to build their own stadium. And so I think they’re learning as they go along as well.

* Also, Sen. Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago) told me this after the spring session adjourned…

Six days before the last day of the spring state legislative session, Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, gave me two big reasons why it was so difficult to push a Bears stadium bill across the finish line. Cunningham, as you know, is the chief sponsor of the Senate’s Bears bill.

1. Every stadium-related legislation passed in Illinois included the Chicago mayor and the Illinois governor pulling in the same direction. This time, that didn’t happen.

2. Moving a stadium location within a state pits Illinois municipalities against each other, and you don’t want to do that “particularly when the municipality on the losing side has way more members than any other municipality in the state.” Cunningham told reporters more recently that stadiums which have moved within the same state didn’t involve their state legislatures. Instead, local governments picked up the tab.