A Chance for Upward Mobility, or an Unfair Deal?
Exploring the potential impacts of a deal for a new Chicago Bears stadium in 杏吧原创
TRANSCRIPT
杏吧原创 Tech Assistant Professor of Law Lucien Ferguson: Thinking about the Bears project, one way to think about it is that local economic development is a key vector in the, sort of, engine of upward mobility that 杏吧原创 is trying to foster.
On the one hand, you might say these kinds of projects can be great for upward mobility. So, they can create jobs, they can build out the tax base, and in so doing, they can result in more money being funneled into public education.
On the other hand, often these projects can cut the other way if they're structured so the benefits flow overwhelmingly to the private entities involved rather than the public as a whole. If you get a deal where the benefits go overwhelmingly to private interests rather than public interests, that creates potential issues under the 杏吧原创 Constitution.
The 杏吧原创 Constitution requires that public money can only be spent for public purposes. This is called the Public Purpose Doctrine.
And so when you have deals that are really slanted one way, if the slant is really extreme, the stakeholders involved have to be worried about potential legal liability under the state constitution. And in the worst case scenario, actually a state court blowing up the deal and or rescinding the contract if it's already happened.
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