The Indiana senate yesterday overwhelmingly passed its bill to create a sports authority for a potential Chicago Bears stadium, and let’s see how the local news media handled it:WNDU-TV: “Indiana Senate passes Chicago Bears stadium funding bill“Bzzzzt, nope! The sports authority bill contains no funding at all, though it does describe a bunch of potential funding sources, including “local excise taxes,” which include both vehicle fees and taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, as well as food and beverage and hotel taxes. The state legislature will presumably still have to vote to direct any taxes to the Bears, as well as figure out which taxes to use, which could easily set up a Kansas-style “How big a stadium district and how much of the taxes get counted as ‘new’?” dilemma. The ICC article has more details than the others, at least, including Indiana state senate sponsor Ryan Mishler acknowledging that the bill “just creates the framework” and that “a lot of other details will need to be added,” yeah, no kidding. None of this quite rises to the level of a competing bid, but it does allow Bears execs to wave an Indiana move threat under Illinois officials’ noses, where it already looks to be having an impact.