The Illinois Sports Facilities Authority has "room to maneuver" without raising taxes, thanks to surging hotel tax revenues and a refinancing of Comiskey bonds, authority CEO Jerry Blakemore said.

"The hotel tax has generated more than we need. And we have continued to reduce our operating and capital expenditures," he said.

Less than a month ago, the Bears asked the stadium authority "to look at what, if anything, we could do" to help finance an elaborate renovation of Soldier Field without going to the Legislature.

The answer is there can be no end-runs around the General Assembly, Blakemore said. State law limits the sports authority to contributing to only one new stadium: Comiskey. While the law regarding stadium renovation projects is murky, Blakemore advised that the "prudent course" would be to seek legislative approval.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported this week that McCormick Place CEO Scott Fawell has offered to finance up to $125 million in lakefront improvements tied to a renovated Soldier Field.

With a $200 million contribution from the Bears and as much as $150 million from the stadium authority, Fawell said Chicago would be able to forge ahead with the "Cadillac version" of a renovated Soldier Field that he believes is needed to win legislative approval.

On Wednesday, Blakemore refused to say how big a piece of the financing puzzle the stadium authority could assume.

Comiskey was financed by a 2 percent increase in the hotel-motel tax that generated $26.6 million last year, up from $11.6 million in 1989.

That 129 percent increase has allowed the stadium authority to return $35.1 million in surplus taxes to the state treasury since 1992. In 1999 alone, the rebate was $6.2 million. Some of the savings has come from refinancing that reduced annual debt service on Comiskey bonds to $14 million, $4 million below a state-mandated debt ceiling.

If the General Assembly raised the authority's debt-service cap and the entire $6.2 million surplus were made available to the Bears, the money could be used to finance more than $80 million of any tax-exempt bonds used on the project.