Gov. JB Pritzker’s office signed a new $25,000 contract late last month with an outside attorney to continue advising the administration in negotiations with the Chicago Bears through the end of June as the NFL franchise seeks to pressure Springfield to act this spring on a proposal that would aid plans for a new stadium in Arlington Heights.

The Pritzker administration’s top lawyer signed the agreement with Steve Argeris, a partner with New York-based law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, on Dec. 22, five days after the Tribune first reported Bears executives were widening the scope of their stadium-site search to include northwest Indiana. The team’s announcement in a letter to season ticket holders came a few weeks after Bears brass met with Pritzker and top aides in the governor’s Chicago office.

Under the agreement, the state will pay Argeris an hourly rate of $1,455 to represent the governor’s office “in connection with evaluating potential stadium projects with one or more professional sports teams,” according to documents the Tribune obtained through an open records request. That’s a discount of more than 40% from the firm’s typical rate of $2,575 per hour for its most experienced partners, records show.

Pritzker spokesperson Matt Hill said Tuesday that there was no connection between the timing of the agreement and the latest twist in the long-running stadium saga.

“Outside counsel is provided on an ongoing basis and does not correlate to specific developments or public announcements,” Hill said in a statement.

Indeed, the Tribune reported in May that the Pritzker administration had been working with Argeris — a New York- and Washington, D.C.-based sports, media and entertainment lawyer who formerly worked for the owners of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers — for a year and had paid him $100,000 in taxpayer funds. The governor’s office began working with Argeris in June 2024, shortly after the Bears launched, with great fanfare, a push for public funding for a new domed stadium on Chicago’s lakefront.

Hill on Tuesday reiterated the Pritzker administration’s position that it needed outside expertise “to conduct due diligence and fully understand all the facts that could impact state taxpayers.”

Argeris’ role has involved meeting with Bears representatives, analyzing the team’s proposals and breaking down how they would affect Illinois taxpayers, the governor’s office told the Tribune last year. He also has advised the governor’s office on how the state could potentially generate revenue from a stadium project.

Argeris has continued working with the state since a contract with his previous firm expired last summer, and he will be able to bill the state retroactively for that work, which has included occasional meetings and correspondence with members of Pritzker’s staff, records show.

On the day of the Bears’ season opener in September, for example, Deputy Gov. Andy Manar included Argeris when forwarding to Pritzker’s chief of staff and general counsel a letter to fans from Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren in which he underscored the team’s intention to build in Arlington Heights and declared: “This is the year to finalize our stadium plans so we can officially bid to host a Super Bowl as soon as 2031.”

Since then, the team has made public overtures about a possible move across state lines to Indiana, where Republican Gov. Mike Braun and the GOP-led state legislature appear, at least initially, more willing to cut a deal than Pritzker and other Democratic leaders in Springfield.

To facilitate a move from publicly owned Soldier Field to a privately funded stadium in Arlington Heights, the Bears have been seeking a change in Illinois law that would allow the team to negotiate its annual property tax payments with the village of Arlington Heights, local school districts and other jurisdictions. Supporters argue that the so-called megaprojects proposal could be used as an economic development tool for large projects across the state, a point Arlington Heights officials reiterated Friday in calling for action during the spring legislative session that is getting underway this month in Springfield.

But approving any such proposal would require the votes of Chicago lawmakers, many of whom oppose helping the Bears leave the team’s namesake city with taxpayers still on the hook for more than $500 million in debt from the Soldier Field renovation completed two decades ago.

The team also must contend with the election-year political optics for Democrats who want to make the case that their party is focused on affordability for everyday residents, an argument that could be undermined by approving a measure to help a privately owned professional sports team recently valued at nearly $9 billion.

While the Bears have said the “property tax certainty” envisioned in the megaprojects proposal is essential to plans for a new domed stadium and mixed-use development in Arlington Heights, the team isn’t asking for any taxpayer money for the stadium itself. Public dollars would be needed to fund an estimated $855 million in infrastructure improvements around the site of the former Arlington International Racecourse, but Pritzker and legislative leaders have expressed an openness to discussing that spending.

“We’ve been really clear about what we’ve been willing to do as a state, and there have been lots of discussions, over time and recently, with the Bears to make sure that they know what those options are,” Pritzker said Friday in response to a question about whether moves from Indiana officials or renewed calls for action from Arlington Heights have altered the political dynamics.