Ohio House speaker doesn’t support $350 million for Bengals stadium renovations

At a time when the Browns are making some progress toward getting a $600 million bond issuance to help pay for a new stadium in the Cleveland area, the Bengals are having a hard time getting the effort to secure $350 million for renovation of their stadium off the ground.

Matt Hufffman, the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, does not support the proposal.

“I did meet with the Bengals and [Hamilton] Commissioner [Denise] Driehaus a few months ago or weeks ago, and basically they’re talking about a $350 million cash upfront . . . which is similar to what the Browns were trying to do a couple of years ago,” Huffman said in an appearance on 700WLW, via Taylor Welter of WCPO.com. “And I don’t support that. I don’t think the public supports it.”

In most places, the public currently would not support any taxpayer money for NFL stadiums. That’s why the goal is to work the levers without putting these measures on a ballot.

Huffman acknowledged that, if the Bengals pursue a strategy like the Browns are pursuing, he might change his mind.

“I do support, you know, something similar that if the Bengals and the City of Cincinnati and the county and, you know, can come together with a similar kind of plan, we ought to consider doing that where the taxpayers are held harmless or in the case of the Browns, they can actually make money,” Huffman said.

The message to the Bengals and Hamilton County is that they probably should go back to the drawing board with their current request for $350 million in cash. And they should do it quickly, because a deadline is looming on June 30 for the Bengals to exercise a two-year extension of the existing lease at Paycor Stadium. Without an extension, the lease will expire after the upcoming season.

Which means, as Bengals executive V.P. Katie Blackburn acknowledged recently, that the Bengals “could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year.”

The clock is ticking toward that theoretical possibility. Which means the Bengals should do something other than advance theoretical impossibilities when it comes to getting public money.