SPRINGFIELD — Gov. JB Pritzker on Monday acknowledged he could end up being the Illinois governor who loses the Chicago Bears to Indiana, but it would be a turnover he can live with if it means keeping a fair playing field for taxpayers.

The morning after a Hail Mary legislative proposal cleared the Illinois Senate but failed to get a vote in the House before legislators gaveled out of session for the summer, Pritzker said his “principles have remained intact” throughout the five-year stadium saga.

“The reality is that I wasn’t willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money in order to give it to a billionaire-owned family, or team, and believe very much that the incentives that we provide for businesses are to be similar to the incentives we provide to this type of business,” Pritzker said at his Capitol office hour, after a marathon overnight conclusion to the session.

“As much of an emotional connection as many of us have to the Bears, and to keeping them in the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois, [the] No. 1 principle is we’re not going to foist this on the taxpayers of the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said.

The governor’s staff was involved in developing the 11th-hour stadium pitch sponsored by state Sen. Bill Cunningham, after a megaproject property tax-incentive proposal the Bears have long sought collapsed a day before the legislative calendar expired.

Cunningham’s bill would allow municipalities to create stadium financing authorities to negotiate with sports franchises interested in building a stadium in Cook County cities with populations of 70,000 or more, putting Chicago back in play. The land and stadium would be owned by the municipality, while the team would pay for stadium construction but be off the hook for any property taxes.

Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch said he didn’t give the bill a vote that arrived in his chamber after 3 a.m. because “we need to take the time to get it right.”

Welch previously ruled out calling a special legislative session before lawmakers are scheduled to return to Springfield in the fall, but Pritzker left the door open to revisiting the capital this summer if legislators find consensus before then. The team has said they’ll decide their destination by “early summer.”

“The votes weren’t there to pass the bill for the Bears, with just being about the Bears,” Welch said. The initial proposal for negotiated payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT), which cleared his chamber last month, applied to companies statewide and included a residential property relief program that wasn’t likely to provide much help to the average homeowner.

Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, who voted for Cunningham’s bill, was more terse in the aftermath of the chaotic conclusion of the session.

“The question, I don’t think, is how this came together last night, but that we did anything,” Harmon said. “There was an enormous undercurrent in our caucus to not do anything. People were worried about their neighbors being thrown off of food stamps. … There was no appetite at all to provide public dollars to a $10 billion sports franchise, as much as we love the Bears.”

Harmon added that “all of us in our neighborhoods and communities heard basically the same thing: Do whatever you need to do to keep the Bears here, but not one nickel.”

While Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tinaglia both expressed skepticism over the latest proposal, Pritzker and the state’s top legislative leaders said there was still time to find a deal.

“There is a bill that was proposed by the Senate, passed by the Senate, and a bill that was passed by the House,” Pritzker said. “I think that those conversations will be ongoing among the legislators. I’ve set out my principles for everybody. We’ll see whether they get followed.”

But the Democratic governor, who’s weighing a White House run in 2028, said he doesn’t think the Bears are running a fake when it comes to flirting with a dome in Indiana, where Hoosier lawmakers are dangling a generous, taxpayer-backed deal to break ground in Hammond.

And regardless of where Springfield lands with the Bears, Pritzker wants legislators to revisit the megaprojects/PILOT concept that would allow big companies — not just the team— to negotiate big property tax breaks when they invest in large developments.

“We still need that, by the way,” Pritzker said. “Thirty-eight states have a PILOT megaprojects law. … We are literally behind the curve. All we’re doing is organizing the way that they negotiate — they’ve always been negotiating about property taxes all across the country. It’s just in Illinois where we’ve had a disorganized, dysfunctional endeavor forever.”