Cincinnati Bengals fans and Hamilton County taxpayers will have to wait until a deal is finalized to learn anything about the new Paul Brown Stadium lease.
Hamilton County and the Bengals negotiated a new stadium lease late last year but offered up a heavily redacted document when the Cincinnati Enquirer filed a public records request for documents related to the negotiations.
Dan Horn and Sharon Coolidge of the Cincinnati Enquirer reported the following:
Six months after the request was filed, county officials sent back 275 pages that had been almost completely blacked out. Every word, other than the date, subject line and names of email recipients, was gone. No noun or verb remained. No punctuation mark survived.
Hamilton County is claiming attorney-client privilege on much of the communications and is also free under the public records law in the state to withhold as they see fit, within reason.
This means taxpayers won’t have information pertaining to the costs of a potential practice facility or what concessions were given by either party. The renegotiated lease ended the Bengals’ dispute of a concert venue near the stadium, provided the county foots the bill on a property. Details of the inner workings remain unclear.
