In the summer season of 2019, because the Chicago Bears equipped for his or her one centesimal season, the workforce’s high officers needed to sort out a delicate off-field matter.
Citing safety issues, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration had requested “updating” her season tickets, which she’d held for years earlier than being elected months earlier to the highest job at City Hall.
Lightfoot’s safety element nervous that she could be arduous to guard within the seats on the lakefront stadium’s 400 stage, so that they approached the Bears about transferring her to a special location.
Team officers, together with President Ted Phillips, labored with Lightfoot’s representatives to attempt to accommodate their safety issues and transfer the mayor’s seats — however the Bears had an issue of their very own. From the workforce’s perspective, a 2016 ethics board ruling impressed by the Chicago Cubs’ World Series run difficult the query of whether or not they might provide the mayor a free and even face-value improve.
The metropolis’s ethics board decided then that giving elected officers entry to face worth tickets for high-demand occasions constituted a “gift” beneath the town’s ethics ordinance, which prohibits them from taking something value greater than $50. Initially, the ethics board stated metropolis officers might obtain tickets in the event that they paid face worth for them. But the board later reversed itself, citing the truth that a daily member of the general public must pay $50 or extra above face worth for such tickets on the open market.
That choice infuriated some members of City Council, although Southwest Side Ald. Matt O’Shea ripped his colleagues. “Buy your own damn tickets,” he stated on the time.
Lightfoot’s 2019 transfer to alter her Soldier Field seats led to months of discussions between the Bears and metropolis officers. In the top, Lightfoot didn’t obtain the improve she sought and stored her season tickets as is.
The Bears declined to remark. Lightfoot’s workplace didn’t deal with questions in regards to the mayor’s effort to maneuver her season tickets.
“It is well-established that Mayor Lightfoot is a die-hard Bears fan and a longtime season ticket holder in the 400 section of Soldier Field. Her seats haven’t changed in at least 10 years and they have remained the same during her tenure as mayor,” the mayor’s workplace stated in a press release launched by press secretary Cesar Rodriguez. “Go Bears.”
City emails launched in response to Tribune public report requests present how high Lightfoot officers communicated with the NFL workforce over the matter.
On Aug. 1, 2019, NFL Associate Security Representative Tina Sherrow Bayless emailed the mayor’s head of safety, Jim Smith, to introduce him to Courtenae Trautmann, one other NFL safety consultant, saying “we anticipate Mayor Lightfoot’s attendance at the Bears’ games this season.”
“Jim, many thanks again for taking my call today and the productive conversation. I’m confident that we will have a collaborative and successful partnership moving forward and we look forward to working with you and your team,” Sherrow Bayless wrote. “If you have any questions, need additional information, or assistance with facilitating anything at the stadium and/or upcoming events, please reach out to us at anytime.”
Smith thanked her for the response and famous, “We are currently in the process of hopefully updating the mayor’s seats, not quite sure at this point where they will be but will advise once we know.”
Trautmann responded, “We are looking forward to a much less confrontational experience with you and your team ;). Whatever we can do to facilitate the mayor’s time at SF, please let us know!”
Writing again, Smith assured her “there will be no further issues on our side of the ball.”
“Anything you need from CPD say the word, I happen to have a friend with some clout ;)” Smith wrote. “I look forward to sitting down.”
Phillips, the Bears president, emailed Smith the subsequent day providing completely different potential ticket choices, “per seat, per year.” Smith forwarded that e mail to Lightfoot’s government assistant.
A Bears government assistant emailed Smith on Aug. 8 to comply with up.
“It is my understanding that you and (Bears executive) Lee Twarling have been in contact regarding season tickets,” the assistant wrote. “I wanted to follow up with you to see if you have any more questions or if any decisions have been made regarding the options you and he have discussed? You may contact either one of us.”
Sign up for The Spin to get the highest tales in politics delivered to your inbox weekday afternoons.
Records present the dialog over tickets continued into the autumn and officers mentioned the ethics ruling as a key hurdle.
In October, for example, Lightfoot’s senior ethics adviser Celia Meza emailed Roger Bickel, an lawyer with the Bears, to ask if they may have “a follow-up conversation regarding the city’s ethics advisory opinion.”
Later that month, Bears General Counsel Cliff Stein emailed Meza to thank her for a sequence of conversations that they had “as both counsel seek to interpret the Board of Ethics guidance as it may relate to addressing the mayor’s security considerations.”
“Per our conversation I am enclosing three options below of the discretionary ticket locations and face value price list. As discussed, this is not a season-ticket holder account, which involves the purchase of a permanent seat license (PSL), but rather an executive discretionary account for the season that the club utilizes for business purposes in its sole discretion,” Stein wrote.
“Given that these tickets are not generally available to the public in advance and are being sold at face value, we would need written confirmation from the Board of Ethics that a hypothetical sale complies with the current ethics opinions and guidance taking into account any safety and security concerns in the stadium,” Stein wrote.
Those tickets coated the final six video games of the 2019 season. The seats have been provided for $1,992 for pairs within the 300 stage, $3,732 within the 200 stage, and $2,248 for pairs within the 100 stage.
In the top, Lightfoot stored her seats on the 400 stage, although it isn’t clear why she and her workforce dropped their request. Steve Berlin, ethics board government director, stated he “cannot comment on any specific fact situation, or whether the board was involved, and if so, what the board advised or to whom — that is all confidential by law.”
The 2019 season was adopted by pandemic-altered 2020, the place followers weren’t allowed within the stadium.
Although Lightfoot is a lifelong soccer fan and a Bears devotee, her administration has had a rocky relationship with the workforce. The mayor’s preliminary response when the Bears expressed curiosity in constructing a stadium in Arlington Heights was to name it “noise” and urge the Bears to give attention to “being relevant past October.”
Since then, Lightfoot has floated the potential for constructing a expensive dome over Soldier Field and appointed a job power to look at the Museum Campus that’s dwelling to the stadium, strikes that have been geared toward mitigating the political fallout if the workforce leaves Chicago.
()
Source: www.bostonherald.com