Mr. Brown had declared victory even before council voted.
''I'm very pleased that we finally got to this point. It isn't done yet,'' he said just after midnight, ''but I think it will be done before too much longer.''
''I'm grateful to a lot of people who got involved to get this thing done,'' he said, adding with a chuckle, ''We're not going to run off before the sun comes up.''
Mr. Brown had warned that if the matter wasn't settled by midnight, he would nullify a lease signed in May with the county to build a $400.3 million stadium complex by August 2000.
Elected officials waited all day Saturday in frustration - and sometimes anger - as administrative staffs and lawyers worked feverishly to iron out wrinkles in an agreement that appeared to have been a done deal Friday.
But the day's events Saturday showed there was nothing simple in reducing months of discussions between parties who often didn't trust one another to 34 pages of documents that could be voted on. Negotiators reached a deal at 10:49 p.m.
Mr. Neyer and Mr. Bedinghaus started tossing a football in county offices to celebrate.
The deal came down to the wire after city officials said the county and Bengals had at the last minute proposed more than 300 changes to the tentative agreement reached Friday and raised several new issues.
But Mr. Bedinghaus said the county's changes were minor issues of legal language, not new issues.
''It's like the sheriff in Blazing Saddles who says to the posse, 'If you don't do it my way, I'll shoot myself,' '' Mr. Bedinghaus said earlier Saturday evening. ''Similarly, the city runs the same risk over riverfront development about these minor issues.''
The last-minute delays came a day after Mr. Neyer announced that the city, county and team had reached an agreement in principle that would allow construction of the Bengals stadium to proceed, keep the team in town and provide a platform for a family entertainment district on the city's riverfront.
The deal required the city to transfer 12.5 acres of city-controlled land the county needs for stadium construction.
Following Mr. Neyer's comments Friday, four council members held a news conference to say a majority of council supported the tentative agreement.
Officials said the only thing left was for city, county and team lawyers to sign off on final language.
But by Saturday afternoon, matters had come unglued.
During a 4 p.m. council meeting, Mr. Shirey said he thought agreement had been reached on all substantive matters. He explained a series of events leading to that meeting, at which he expected council would OK the deal.
The city on Friday, he said, had sent drafts of sections of the agreement to the county and did not hear back on most of them. By 7:30 p.m., he said, the draft was complete and given to the county.
About 1 a.m. Saturday, county comments began coming in. By early afternoon, Mr. Shirey said, more than 300 changes had been raised. Most were minor, such as the capitalization of a word, while others were major, such as how the city would be allowed to develop the central riverfront and parking matters.
Negotiators, Mr. Shirey said, went from working on a 13- or 14-page agreement to one that was 35 pages.
''I'm sure it was easier for the Founding Fathers to put together a document creating the nation, but somehow we've not been able to get this one completed leading to the development of the riverfront,'' he said.
A 2 p.m. meeting during which commissioners were supposed to approve the agreement lasted only a couple of minutes.
At 3:20 p.m., Mr. Shirey said: ''Apparently some people are not in as big a hurry as they thought they were.''
He added that ''people on the other side apparently want to raise new issues'' and take a long time to resolve them.
But Mr. Bedinghaus said the county didn't raise any new issues or suggest any major changes. City officials were aware of all the minor, technical differences in language on Friday, he said.
While the lease doesn't specifically refer to transfer of the city land, it required the county to have a ''guaranteed maximum price'' by Saturday.
County officials say their construction manager can't guarantee a price until the county has the land, because it affects the construction schedule and overtime costs, among other factors.
Mr. Shirey said the Bengals and the county could amend the lease to move that date. Mr. Brown declined to comment on that.
''The truth of the matter is really nothing need happen if it doesn't get done by midnight,'' Mr. Shirey said earlier in the day, adding that the Bengals know the deal gives them 99.9 percent of what they wanted and he believes the team wants to stay here.
When asked then whether she thought the team would leave if the deadline passed, Mayor Roxanne Qualls said: ''We don't deal with what-ifs. We just deal with what is.''
She said the county's changes make matters difficult.
Said Councilman Tyrone Yates: ''This is the silliest thing - being dangled on a string by a football team.''
Saturday's developments were reminiscent of the June 1995 city-county deal that paved the way for a sales tax increase to pay for Bengals and Reds stadiums.
Moments before midnight then, city council - by a 5-4 vote - approved an agreement with Hamilton County that set the stage for new stadiums along the city's riverfront for the Bengals and the Reds. The vote came after 13 hours of negotiations and gloomy predictions that a deal had collapsed.
That, too, came in the face of an ultimatum from Mr. Brown: Forge a deal by a certain date or the team would begin exclusive relocation negotiations with Baltimore the next day.
Tanya Albert contributed to this report.
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