As James Strong reported in The Tribune Aug. 10, ”Chances for a new Chicago Bears football stadium in the city suffered another setback . . . when Mayor Daley asserted that he could not justify using public funds to finance a facility where only a handful of games would be played each year.”
It`s about time that one of our public officials stood up for taxpayers and said ”no” to the robber-baron whims of the local sports industry. Should Michael McCaskey`s Bears get that new, publicly built football stadium, this would put the combined transfer payments from our state`s public sector to the lords of the local sports industry at somewhere around $400 million.
One imagines what good this obscenely high sum of money could have done if put to work in the neighborhoods that need help the most.
Richie Daley`s ”no” to the Bears is the most important decision of his youthful tenure. And most just.
