County halts use of taxpayer-owned stadium suites

Hamilton County's taxpayer-owned suites at Great American Ball Park and Paul Brown Stadium are off limits again to school kids, sheriff's deputies and anyone else who might want to use them.

County commissioners locked the doors this week when they voted 2-1 in favor of a policy that all but eliminates the county's use of the suites for any purpose.

The move is an especially tough blow to Sheriff Jim Neil, who had asked commissioners to renew a "Game with a Cop" program he started last year, in which deputies took school kids from all over the county to Reds and Bengals games.

The program, which Neil launched last year without consulting commissioners, was the county's first use of the suites in years. County officials had shied away from the suites since 2009, when Auditor Dusty Rhodes exposed how some county and city leaders were giving themselves first dibs on the suites and were using tax dollars to stock them with food.

Neil, a Democrat, said "Game with a Cop" doesn't use tax dollars and asked commissioners last week to let him continue the program, but Republican commissioners Greg Hartmann and Chris Monzel said no.

While the sheriff's program is a good one, they said, they don't want to open the floodgates to requests from other charitable organizations to use the suites. They said county officials would then be forced to decide which groups are worthy of using the suites and which are not.

"It's incredibly difficult to craft a policy where you give them to citizens," Hartmann said. "As a public official, I don't think it's right for us to control two boxes at sports stadiums that the public has paid so much for."

The county, which owns both stadiums, got the suites as part of its lease agreement with the teams – an agreement that has created a budget crunch for years because sales tax revenue has fallen short of expectations.

When commissioners stopped the practice of using the suites to entertain business leaders, reward foster parents and other purposes, the suites remained empty or were re-sold by the teams on a game-by-game basis.

Neil, who could not be reached for comment Thursday, said in a letter to commissioners last week that using the suites for a program like his makes sense because it costs taxpayers nothing and benefits "the children of the taxpayers who are paying for the stadiums."

"I'm hopeful you will consider this request, keeping in mind the children who will miss out on not just the experience of the game, but the opportunity to see deputies and officers in a new, positive light," Neil said in the letter.

He said hundreds of children have benefited from the program and he hoped to use the suites in the coming year for eight Bengals' home games and up to 20 Reds games.

Hartmann and Monzel said Neil could work with the Reds and Bengals to secure the temporary donation of other suites so he could continue the program.

Commissioner Todd Portune, the commission's lone Democrat, voted against the ban and said the county is missing a great opportunity to honor worthy causes and lure business leaders to the region.

"It's an asset, and we should not just forgo the use of that asset," Portune said.

The county does stand to gain some money from the re-sale of its suites by the teams, but not much. Under terms of the lease, the county would get the standard 25 cents per ticket share it gets from all ticket sales for games, and would get half of the revenue from the sale of tickets for non-game events.

Hartmann said he'd like the county to sell the suites outright, but that would require a change to the lease. For now, he said, barring their use by the county is the best option.