The deal for repairs and expansion of the new Bengals stadium will cost around $42 million, yet taxpayers have no idea what they are paying for.
Towards the end of the deal’s end date, the Cincinnati Enquirer requested emails and documents about the deals and what it would cost. Last week they finally got a response, in the form of 275 pages of redacted records, claiming it was all privileged information.
The things redacted included every word, every punctuation, and even some page numbers. The only things unredacted were email headers. This level of redaction is highly unusual and Enquirer lawyer Jack Greiner said, the “notion that every word, every comma, every individual should be redacted is absurd.”
While taxpayers know they are paying for repairs, they do not know other details behind the deal. Taxpayers also do not know the cost of the land for the practice facility, which has been estimated to cost as high as $60 million. Finally, Taxpayers do not know the details behind negotiating the deal, such as counter proposals and cost estimates.
This means taxpayers are at an almost complete lost for what they are paying for, and how competitive the process was, even though they are on the hook for millions of dollars. The Bengals are bungling the situation.