announced that Cincinnati had breached its lease agreement when it was late by one week in paying $167,000 in concession receipts. He threatened to move the team to Baltimore if Cincinnati or Hamilton County would not fund a new stadium. The leverage of this threat proved successful as Cincinnati's City Council and the Hamilton County Commissioners opted to fund the new Paul Brown Stadium with a proposed county sales tax increase, which needed voter approval. (Modell eventually, and controversially, moved the Browns to Baltimore and renamed it to the Ravens, but a new Cleveland team resumed the Browns' history.) In 1996, Hamilton County voters passed a one-half percent sales tax increase to fund the building of a new facility for the Bengals and a second new facility for the Major League Baseball Cincinnati Reds. The Bengals filed suit against the county for the right to manage it in 2000. County commissioners agreed to let a Bengals' subsidiary run the stadium, and it opened later that year. In 2007, Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune (a former Cincinnati City Council member, though not Commissioner at the time the parties executed the lease), filed a lawsuit in federal district court against the NFL, the Bengals and the other 31 NFL teams. Portune felt, among other things, that published revenues from 1995 to 1999 contradicted Brown's claims of financial distress. The Hamilton County Board of Commissioners eventually was substituted as the plaintiff in the case. Fans supporting Portune cited what they felt was the broken promise that the Bengals would "be more competitive" with a new stadium. The Bengals have had only eight winning seasons out of 22 since the stadium opened, with five of those seasons occurring from 2011 to 2015. Rick Eckstein, co-author of "Public Dollars, Private Stadiums," described the Hamilton County arrangement as "the single most lopsided stadium deal since 1993" and questioned Bob Bedinghaus' role with the team after having been County Commissioner when the deal was reached. A 2008 Forbes survey suggested the team's rankings in direct revenues had dropped since the stadium's construction (placing the team 21st in total value at the time at $941 million). The organization's lease is due to expire in 2026. In 2020, Hamilton County and the Bengals agreed to split costs on an architectural needs assessment of the stadium. On-the-field struggles Since Brown became owner, the team has eight winning seasons out of