Even the Chicago Bears’ lengthy odds of winning next year’s Super Bowl appear better than the team’s chances of convincing Illinois lawmakers to authorize $900 million of borrowing in the next few weeks to build a new $3.2 billion stadium.

The National Football League team’s pitch to erect a gleaming domed stadium and revamped lakefront offers more than $2 billion in private funding from the Bears, but the ask for public dollars is already facing concern from officials who approve key financing resources and have to balance an already tight budget.

“If we were to put this item on the board for a vote right now, it would fail and it would fail badly,” Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch said.

In a proposal revealed Wednesday, the Bears would provide the bulk of the cash toward the stadium, with an additional $300 million coming from the NFL.

A crucial portion would be $900 million in public monies acquired through a sale of municipal bonds by the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, a government organization set up in the 1980s.

The Bears are expecting for that authority to come through by the completion of the current legislative session at the end of May — giving officials around five weeks to decide.

Proponents don’t want to wait months for Congress to reconvene in the fall because the winter cold may delay the project, said team president Kevin Warren.

“There is no climate for something like this today,” Welch told reporters on Wednesday. He highlighted that while things could change, it’s “highly improbable” to turn so significantly in the next month.

The ask comes at a challenging moment. Illinois is facing its tightest budget in three years that includes what Governor J.B. Pritzker has called “hard choices.

” The state — which has the lowest credit rating among peers even after a string of improvements — is striving to pass a balanced budget plan while pledging hundreds of millions to care for migrants and paying down its nearly $140 billion unfunded pension liabilities.

Maintaining the state’s improved fiscal trajectory is a priority that Welch, Pritzker and other state leaders highlight regularly. The memories of Illinois’ credit grade hovering on the brink of trash near the onset of the epidemic and a two-year budget standoff before that are still fresh.

“My goal is that the timing of this is not to give the legislature the bum’s rush to hurry along in the next five weeks,” said Joe Ferguson, president of the Civic Federation, a fiscal watchdog. He said the fall session will allow decision makers four to five months for an economic review.

Ferguson said Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson being alongside club officials supporting the idea implies the city is not an independent party and extra outside examination of the financial plan is necessary.

The entire pitch from the Bears is for a nearly $5 billion project that includes a refurbished lakefront in addition to the stadium.

The Bears proposal would restructure past debt sold for Soldier Field, the Bears’ current stadium, and Guaranteed Rate Field, home to Major League Baseball’s White Sox, by the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority and extend the maturity by 40 years, generating net new bond proceeds worth more than $1 billion, said Karen Murphy, executive vice president of stadium development for the Bears.

The debt would be guaranteed by proceeds from a 2% local hotel tax. If those monies fall short, the team plans to set up a reserve fund to offset the deficit, according to Murphy.

Previously, when hotel tax revenue that the authority uses as a significant source of money has declined — like during fiscal 2022 and 2023 because of the pandemic — the state is able to pull from income tax collections it distributes to Chicago.

Fitch Ratings in December elevated the authority two notches to BBB, lifting it from trash to investment grade. The hike reflected “the robust and sustained recovery in hotel tax revenues” however the business warned nonetheless that a decline in stays or a “significant unanticipated new money issuance” may cause a downgrade.

“We’d have to watch how it plays out,” said Fitch analyst Eric Kim, noting that few specifics are available on the nature of the proposed funding. “We are obviously looking in terms of what is the state going to be taking on as part of this endeavor.”

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