The fight is over. After years of pushing the PILOT (megaprojects) bill in the Illinois state legislature, the Chicago Bears watched it go down in flames, unable to get the necessary vote in the Senate for passage. A last-second attempt by officials to put forward a new bill that would give the team a loophole to still build in Illinois did pass the Senate, but wasn’t voted on by the House before the legislature adjourned for the summer. All of that work appears to have been for nothing, and Kevin Warren stands at the center of it.
More and more evidence has surfaced about how incredibly the Bears’ team president has mismanaged the process. He failed to stay on task with Arlington Heights, attempting to pivot to a downtown complex that never had a prayer. His push for infrastructure support came without a traffic study that would’ve clarified where the money would go. That doesn’t include his frequent public announcements that seem to do more harm than good in negotiations.
Would you be shocked to learn it gets worse? Paris Schutz of NBC Chicago covered the situation in Springfield and uncovered some ugly details. He explained them to 104.3 The Score.
Kevin Warren hired lobbyists to help push the bill. Then ignored their advice.
One of the things a source told me was that typically when you want something big to happen, you hire some lobbyists that have these relationships with lawmakers. Again, it might be an unseemly process. We might hate it, but this is the reality. And what they do is they go build a coalition. They go meet with individual lawmakers. They go do what they ever have to do to get the votes.
And what I’m told is the Bears didn’t do that. They didn’t meet with individual lawmakers. They had this high-level 500-foot strategy where we just need to talk to the important players here, and they’re going to get the lawmakers on board. Well, it turns out these important players in the legislature did not have that much muscle to get their members to back the Bears. They do on other things, but again, the Bears by themselves weren’t enough to get people to just say, ‘ Yeah, sure, I’m going to vote for them.’…
…So it was up to the Bears to to build that coalition and I’m told over and over again that’s just not what happened. They kept it to the governor’s office, the legislative leader’s office. I mean, two years ago, it was the mayor’s office, and that didn’t work because the mayor didn’t have that much power to get stuff done.
This is not like the days of Daly. So I’m just telling you, I’m relaying you what I heard that lawmakers are puzzled that this was the strategy. And it wasn’t more because let me tell you this. They hired a bunch of lobbyists that know their way about Springfield. And I was told over and over again that Kevin Warren didn’t listen to them.
Warren once again shows he’s a fraud.
Lots of people keep defending him, saying he was thrown into a situation he didn’t create. Maybe so, but he’s had more than three years to clean things up. Instead, he’s muddied the waters even further. For all this bombast he puts out about dreaming big, the guy is truly all talk. Nothing about how he’s operated as Bears president suggests he has a clue what he is doing. Forgetting the traffic study was bad enough. Hiring a bunch of people to advise you on how to negotiate with the always fractious Illinois government and then ignoring them is peak stupidity.
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That should tell you how big of an ego Kevin Warren has. He operates like many of your classic politicians. He knows what is best. Your advice is appreciated, but it’s still his decision. It makes you wonder how many times a guy must be humiliated before he realizes he might be doing things wrong. Warren is not a leader. Leaders listen to the smart people around them before making an informed decision. Warren is what we call a “pretender.” Somebody who acts like a boss but shows zero actual leadership skills.
The Bears have to see reason at this point.
This man was supposed to be the expert. He’d helped Minnesota close the deal on U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, right? Day after day, it becomes apparent that Warren took the Bears’ money and title for prestige, with no concrete plan or even an idea of how he’d get this stadium thing done. Just because Ted Phillips went off half-cocked when he bid on the Arlington Park property doesn’t excuse this fiasco. Warren had plenty of time and resources to clean things up. He hasn’t done that.
George McCaskey is a patient boss. He wants to believe the people he hires can get things figured out. The problem is that such patience isn’t rewarded more often than not. Warren has done nothing since his arrival to justify the money they keep paying him. Meanwhile, he’s taking credit for things he never really had much say in. The madness needs to end. McCaskey must accept that he messed up the hire and bring an actual adult into the room.
