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CLT UPDATE
Monday, July 27, 2015

The Boston Olympics Con Goes On


The prospect of Boston gleaming on the world stage, flush with jobs and served by an upgraded transit system, clashed with dire warnings about nightmarish traffic, steep cost overruns, and misplaced priorities in a sometimes testy debate Thursday between Olympic organizers and opponents.

The chairman of Boston 2024 and a top official at the US Olympic Committee, under pressure to raise the bid’s sagging poll numbers, ardently defended their budget and commitment to transparency, and said Boston should use the Olympics to spark long-needed improvements.

“We need to move Boston forward. The Olympics can be a catalyst to do that,” said Steve Pagliuca, the Boston 2024 chairman, Bain Capital executive, and co-owner of the Boston Celtics. “Our biggest risk is not taking advantage of the opportunity.”

But that Olympic pitch came under near-relentless attacks from the co-chair of No Boston Olympics and a Smith College economist, Andrew Zimbalist, who said Boston 2024’s budget figures were fueled by “drunken optimism.”

“We have an important past and a bright future. We got that way by thinking big but also thinking smart,” said Christopher Dempsey, the No Boston Olympics co-chairman and a former Bain & Co. consultant. “We’re better off passing on Boston 2024’s risky sales pitch.” ...

One heated exchange centered on the potential for traffic jams during the Games.

“I have been to six Olympics,” said Daniel Doctoroff, a USOC board member and a former deputy mayor of New York who led that city’s unsuccessful bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics. “In every single one, there was dramatically less traffic than in the same city in the prior year or in any other time.”

But Dempsey said that traffic was light because the mayors of host cities often told their largest employers to keep their workers home during the Games.

Seeking to appeal to the hometown audience, he painted Doctoroff as an out-of-town Olympic honcho trying to dictate Boston’s future.

“For you to come up from New York and tell us you have a better way to run our city,” Dempsey scolded, as Doctoroff waved away the jab and asserted that even skeptical host cities end up loving the Olympics.

The Boston Globe
Friday, July 24, 2015
Clashing visions of Games offered at debate
Pointed exchanges focus on traffic, financing, priorities for city


We tuned in hoping for one of those famous debate moments — something like Gerald Ford claiming there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, or Ronald Reagan stating, “I am paying for this microphone." We would have even settled for Pags spanking Dempsey with, “I knew Red Auerbach. Red Auerbach was a friend of mine. You, sir, are no Red Auerbach."

The best we got was Zimbalist saying, “Most of the numbers I look at reflect drunken optimism."

Ouch. That one hurt....

Speaking for the USOC, Doctoroff denied Boston might lose the bid to Los Angeles: “Rumors are rumors. They were never true. We were not looking at LA. Boston is our city." This will be a handy quote to resurrect if the USOC pulls the bid from Boston in September.

Doctoroff also predicted, “Revenue numbers will be achieved."

When Dempsey asked, “If they are so confident with their budget projections, why are they asking for a taxpayer guarantee?" Pagliuca claimed the No Boston folks were engaging in hyperbole....

Pfeiffer scored points when she moved the topic from economics to good old-fashioned traffic. That’s when Doctoroff said traffic jams disappeared in LA during the 1984 Games and told us, “People adjust."

“What about the seven years leading up when all the construction happens?" asked Zimbalist.

Bingo. Big point for No Boston Olympics....

It got worse for Pags and the Doc in the closing minutes. Every time the No Boston guys raised legitimate points, the Boston 2024 guys would charge hyperbole....

Dempsey closed with, “Boston 2024 is asking taxpayers to sign a guarantee to cover cost overruns ... we’re better off passing on Boston 2024’s risky sales pitch."

Amen to that.

In my view, there are only two groups of folks who favor bringing the Olympics to Boston: 1. People who stand to profit; 2. Hopelessly naive people. I’m putting Pags into category No. 2. He doesn’t need this. He’s doing it because he believes in it.

Here’s hoping the USOC pulls the plug on the Boston bid. I don’t believe Doctoroff when he says those rumors were never true.

Putting Doctoroff on this panel was just the latest in a long line of blunders by the hapless folks from Boston 2024. We lived through the winter of 2014-15. We tolerate the clunky MBTA and ever-clogged roadways. We don’t need to have a rich guy from New York tell us that “people adjust."

No thanks, Boston 2024.

The Boston Globe
Friday, July 24, 2015
Olympic debate lacked what we wanted to hear
By Dan Shaughnessy


Charlie Baker, put us out of our misery.

Bid 2.0 is in, the polls are out, the prime-time debate is over, and soon you will have the Brattle Group report vetting the plan to host the 2024 Summer Games.

Once that report is done, you should have everything you need to say whether we should go for the gold — or stay home. Your opinion matters because you hold the purse strings — and as everyone knows, hosting the Olympics ain’t cheap....

So, governor, either pull the plug — or breathe new life into this thing. Don’t let us muddle along in a coma-like state....

You could even say it’s up to the voters — and support, which you love to do, a ballot initiative. But we didn’t elect you to collect signatures outside Star Market....

Opposing the Games would also upset companies and business leaders, including key political supporters, who have raised more than $14 million to craft the bid.

But the Olympic dream is not yours. You didn’t come to Beacon Hill to chase a grand vision. You wanted to create jobs, improve schools, strengthen communities, and make government work better. In other words, fixing the Health Connector website and shortening the lines at the RMV are your kind of priorities.

The Boston Globe
Friday, July 24, 2015
It’s time for Baker to weigh in on Boston 2024
By Shirley Leung


As a potential Olympic traffic nightmare looms, some mayors who could bear the brunt of hosting events are raising concerns Boston 2024 hasn’t been keeping them in the loop.

Lowell Mayor Rodney M. Elliott wants Olympic officials to provide more details quickly because the city is expected to host rowing and taekwondo.

“It would be nice to have some definitive answers as soon as possible, so we can start planning,” Elliott said. “Traffic is really a concern to us. We are already at capacity now with the bridges. We’d have to take a serious look at the games if there isn’t anything done to address that.”

The Herald reported yesterday Boston 2024 hasn’t released projections on how much traffic the Summer Games would add to the highway system, which already faces a projected 70 percent increase in freight trucks on state roads by 2030.

Experts have predicted more bottlenecks with special VIP lanes on roads and highways connecting Olympic events — an undetermined route because at least half a dozen major venue locations are still unknown.

The Boston Herald
Friday, July 24, 2015
Area mayors: Olympics our problem, too


The proposed 2024 Summer Games could bring gridlock and bottlenecks to the Bay State’s already jammed highways, as motorists are excluded from miles of special VIP lanes and congestion worsens from an increase of freight trucks on the road.

Boston 2024 still has not released any projections on how much traffic the 17-day, $4.6 billion games would add to the highway system.

Olympic organizers plan to shut down at least one lane of traffic on any road or highway connecting sporting events, which include venues in Boston, New Bedford, Lowell and Worcester. The express VIP lanes are expected to include I-93 and the Pike, but it’s unclear exactly how many other roadways could become bottlenecks because officials haven’t yet announced locations for a velodrome, aquatics center, golf, preliminary basketball games or a media center.

Boston 2024 CEO Richard Davey defended the mandated so-called Olympic Route Network, saying the private lanes, which would only be in use when needed, have “proven to be efficient for the Olympics and also proven to be fairly innocuous for the city residents.” ...

Boston already has two truck bottlenecks among the nation’s top 100 on I-95 and I-93 — both pegged for Olympic VIP lanes, said Rebecca Brewster of the American Transportation Research Institute

“There’s no question you can’t have a Super Bowl or Olympics without truck deliveries,” she said. “You have to get the food there and the hotels and hospitals supplied.”

But Anne Lynch of the Massachusetts Motor Transportation Association said Olympics officials have yet to reach out to the state’s trucking industry, which employs more than 120,000 people. Lynch said the Olympics could impede deliveries at a time of heightened demand. “You’re going to have two problems: less access and more needs.”

Former state Transportation Secretary and MIT lecturer Fred Salvucci said, “The Southeast Expressway is a disaster, there’s no explanation about how they’re going to upgrade that sufficiently to handle what they’re talking about. Every time we’ve had to deal with the Southeast Expressway over the past 40 years ... it’s a migraine headache, and a lot of planning had to go into providing substitute service and staging the construction to minimize the impact.”

The Boston Herald
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Paving the road to an Olympic sized traffic ‘migraine’


Boston Olympics organizers strongly downplayed the prospects for a referendum on the Games, and characterized the opposition as a small band of doubters, in their winning pitch to the US Olympic Committee in December, according to newly released documents.

The complete version of Boston 2024’s initial bid, which the group released Friday, reveals several sections that have been hidden from the public for months, including information about venue costs, fund-raising strategies, and the roadblocks the group might face.

One of the redacted sections sought to assure the USOC that it would be exceedingly difficult for critics of the Games to launch a ballot campaign to block the bid.

Boston 2024 officials told the USOC that it would cost “in excess of a million dollars” to launch a ballot campaign and that “opponents to an initiative petition have multiple opportunities to object and intervene throughout the process at every step, including through reviewing signatures for proper certification.”

“Although technically possible to have a ballot initiative in 2016, given the onerous process, any initiative petition advanced by opponents to Boston 2024 would likely not appear on the ballot before November 2018,” Boston Olympics organizers wrote.

Months after making that argument, Boston 2024 bowed to the mounting opposition to its bid and agreed to propose its own referendum for the November 2016 ballot.

In the unredacted bid documents released Friday, Boston 2024 also told the USOC that it did not believe that the opposition group No Boston Olympics was formidable.

“Four local activists formed a group in opposition to our bid, and while we respect their differing views and their right to promote them, our polling data shows that they do not represent the majority of public opinion,” Boston 2024 wrote. “No elected official has publicly endorsed the group, they have not received significant financial backing and their efforts have been limited to social media.”

At the time, polls did indicate that a majority of residents supported the Games. Since then, the tide has shifted, however, and most residents now oppose the bid. No Boston Olympics has also become a prominent voice in the debate, sparring on stage with bid leaders in a televised debate on Thursday....

No Boston Olympics issued a statement on Friday blasting bid leaders for withholding the information.

“The release of Boston 2024’s unredacted bid documents confirm that the boosters have been saying one thing behind closed doors, and an entirely different thing to Massachusetts taxypayers,” the group said. “The redactions made in January show that the documents were whitewashed to remove any mention of existing opposition to the bid, and to conceal budget estimates that indicated the Games may operate at a deficit. Boston 2024 is asking for a taxpayer guarantee to cover overruns, but they have not earned the public’s trust.”

The Boston Globe
Friday, July 24, 2015
Opposition, vote downplayed in initial Olympics bid


The initial bid submitted to the U.S. Olympic Committee referred to a need for an "additional $471M in revenues," a figure that was excised from the version later released to the public....

In the complete version of the initial bid package, Boston 2024 described its opposition as "four local activists" who formed a group that, "no elected official has publicly endorsed...they have not received significant financial backing and their efforts have been limited to social media."

"We've been characterized as a David and Goliath situation from the beginning, but arguably we've made some impact in this debate," No Boston Olympics co-chair Kelley Gossett said. "We are committed to continuing our effort while highlighting the risks associated with Boston 2024's bid." ...

"Bidding for and hosting the Games in the Boston area are generally popular ideas. Support is consistent across the Commonwealth, and over the past seven months, we have seen this support grow steadily as residents begin to learn more about a potential Olympics in the Boston area," the group wrote in a section of the report that had already been made public.

The January release of bid documents also omitted a page concerning the possibility that the group could be forced into a referendum by opponents to the bid.

In the material provided to the USOC but not made public until Friday, Boston 2024 detailed the steps a group would have to take in order to bring the Olympic bid to a ballot question.

Earlier this week, Citizens for a Say Chairman Evan Falchuk, and Tank Taxes for Olympics co-chairs Marty Lamb, Steve Aylward and Rep. Shaunna O'Connell began that process by filing initiative petition language with the attorney general's office with the goal of placing a binding question on the November 2016 ballot. The proposed question would bar the use of public funds for the Olympics....

Boston 2024 also noted that Olympic supporters would have "multiple opportunities to object and intervene throughout the process at every step." They wrote opponents to an initiative petition could review referendum signatures for "proper certification" and "may also pursue court challenges."

"Boston 2024 is afraid of a ballot question, and they've outlined a detailed plan to fight back against any effort to have one," Falchuck said in a statement Friday.

Even if such a petition were to prevail, Olympic supporters "could seek to have the legislature amend or repeal the petition's decree through new legislation," Boston 2024 wrote.

The topic of potential legislation was not limited to a hypothetical ballot question in the Boston Olympic bid.

In the version of the bid that was submitted to the USOC, Boston 2024 said it "anticipates proposal of comprehensive Olympic legislation to facilitate venues and transportation in a unified manner."

In the version released publicly months ago, the group said it "could envision" such a proposal.

Perhaps knowing that it would be in need of special legislation at some point, Boston 2024, in a portion of the bid that was released to the public earlier this year, wrote, "Support from current Senate President Therese Murray (D-Plymouth), Senate Majority Leader Stanley Rosenberg (D-Amherst), who will become Senate President in January, Speaker of the House Robert DeLeo (D-Winthrop) and members of the Boston Legislative Delegation represents important bipartisan leadership on Beacon Hill that will strengthen our plan to engage legislators across the Commonwealth in the coming months."

State House News Service
Friday, July 24, 2015
Release of additional bid info feeds Olympics debate


The US Olympic Committee is pressing Governor Charlie Baker and Mayor Martin J. Walsh to put more of their political capital behind Boston’s struggling bid for the 2024 Olympic Games, but neither politician appears ready to satisfy the USOC, according to a person close to the bid process.

With USOC members set to discuss Boston’s status at a board meeting Monday, the standoff raises new questions about the fate of a bid already in peril due to low poll numbers.

USOC members want the popular governor to endorse the bid, the person close to the process said, which could breathe new life and credibility into the city’s effort.

The board is also pressuring Walsh, an Olympic backer, to announce that he will sign the host city contract required by the International Olympic Committee, which would put city taxpayers on the hook if the Games ran short of money or suffered cost overruns, the person said.

Baker is expected to call into the USOC meeting. A Baker adviser said Saturday that the governor’s message to USOC would be that he would have no news for them until he reviewed the findings of the Brattle Group, a consultant the state hired to vet the Olympic plan released a month ago by Boston 2024, the local Olympic bid committee....

The USOC believes any bid for the Games would be substantially weaker if a host city refused to guarantee to deliver the Games as promised.

The guarantee is generally a difficult political issue in the United States, where government support for the Olympics is limited....

The bid survived the board meeting, though the USOC said it wanted to see poll numbers improve.

One month later, public polls are not dramatically different.

The Boston Globe
Sunday, July 26, 2015
USOC wants stronger backing from Walsh, Baker on Olympic bid


Pick a number, any number between 66 and 90. That’s the percentage of public support that the International Olympic Committee customarily wants to see from cities bidding for the Games. That’s where Boston would need to be by the time the Lords of the Rings choose their 2024 summer site in September 2017. That’s where Chicago was (67 percent) when the IOC polled local residents eight months before it selected Rio de Janeiro for 2016. That’s the desired minimum of civic support required if a city is to turn itself upside-down for seven years and spend billions of dollars for a five-ringed festival that lasts for 17 days....

Yet the cost and complexity of staging the Games still proved daunting even to cities that could have handled them. Munich, the runner-up to Pyeongchang for 2018, would have been a ideal site with ice events in the city and snow events in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a perennial stop on the World Cup ski circuit. But voters in all of the venue districts said “nein” in November 2013 and Munich opted out.

So did Krakow, the Polish city that would have shared the Games with a Slovakian counterpart, after 70 percent of voters turned thumbs down. So did St. Moritz, the Swiss resort that hosted in 1948. So did Stockholm. And Oslo, the 1952 site that would have used Lillehammer’s Alpine and sliding venues from 1994, withdrew last autumn after voters did an about-face in a matter of months.

In every case, either the taxpayers said no or the politicians whom they elected figured that they would. That’s why cities with robust public support tend to become front-runners, as Paris is for 2024. The French, who disagree on which cheeses to select from the restaurant trolley, polled at 73 percent positive in the capital last month. No doubt, having hosted the summer Games twice (in 1900 and 1924) and contended for them in 1992, 2008, and 2012, helped to remove much of the public anxiety about plunging in again....

Should the governor conclude next month after seeing the independent Brattle Group’s study that the numbers indeed can work and the Games are a worthy public-private enterprise, his affirmation also should boost the numbers.

Sooner, they’ll need a 5 in front of them. Later, at least a 6. The IOC isn’t expecting a high 8. “Twenty-five percent of people will be against everything all the time,” Pound observed. But 40-something is a failing grade anywhere on the planet.

The Boston Globe
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Lack of public support leaves Boston bid in precarious position


The USOC will meet tomorrow on Boston’s shaky bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, where one board member told the Herald she won’t be surprised if the 17-day, $4.6 billion plan comes up for a fateful vote.

“We need to know how (Boston) is doing and if the people of the city are interested in hosting the games,” said Anita L. DeFrantz, a member of both the United States Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee.

“We need to get a report. I need to know,” DeFrantz told the Herald yesterday, voicing doubt about support for the games in the Hub....

Gov. Charlie Baker said he will also speak to the USOC tomorrow, but he repeated yesterday he will not make a decision about backing or not backing the games without the results of a state-commissioned independent study expected out next month.

“I said I would call into the meeting and give them an update on where we are,” Baker said during a stop in Mattapan. “That study’s going to be critical to our decision.”

Baker said the USOC has not been in contact with his office about what he’s expected to reveal tomorrow.

The IOC has set Sept. 15 as the day cities must commit to bidding for the 2024 Summer Games, with a final decision not coming until 2017 at its meeting in Lima, Peru.

Budapest, Hamburg, Paris and Rome — and possibly Toronto — are all also said to be vying to host the 2024 Summer Games.

The Boston Herald
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Boston’s beleaguered bid at breaking point
USOC could vote tomorrow


Chip Ford's CLT Commentary

Much has occurred over the past week concerning the Boston 2024 Olympics assault on taxpayers, citizens, and motorists of Massachusetts, beginning with the Fox 25/Boston Globe debate on Thursday evening. Technically it began last Monday when Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson announced he wanted to subpoena the redacted original bid from Boston 2024. On Wednesday, during a contentious council hearing, Boston City Council President Bill Linehan blocked a vote until the next council meeting, on Aug. 12.  Then came Thursday evening's debate, followed on Friday by the begrudging document dump of Boston 2014's original, highly-redacted secret bid document.

One redacted section (NUMBER 5: POLITICAL & PUBLIC SUPPORT; 2.7 Potential Forced Referendum see excerpt below) addressed the difficulty of an initiative petition for opponents — and how Boston 2024 intended to make it more so by pulling out all stops to kill it in the crib — or circumvent it through the courts and Legislature should voters support it.  These are the same Lords of the Rings who promised to put approval on the 2016 ballot for the voters to decide — who stated they would not go forward with their plan if rejected by the voters!  The filing deadline with the Attorney General is a week from tomorrow, Wednesday, August 5.  Let's see if Boston 2024 keeps its promise, and if they do, exactly what they propose in their ballot question.

In its original bid document Boston 2024 wrote:

"The initiative petition process generally takes a minimum of two years in order to satisfactorily complete the many burdensome steps. Although technically possible to have a ballot initiative in 2016, given the onerous process, any initiative petition advanced by opponents to Boston 2024 would likely not appear on the ballot before November 2018."

Clearly this proves they don't know much about the initiative petition process.  If the language is constitutionally proper and approved by the AG it gets sent to the Secretary of State, who has the petition forms printed.  Activists will have them in hand within a month and have roughly a three-month period to collect the requisite number of signatures, have them certified by each appropriate city or town clerk.  Then the signatures are returned to the Secretary of State for final certification.  If sufficient signatures have been attained the initiative is sent to the Legislature, which can adopt it (it becomes law), or reject/ignore it (which then requires the collection of an additional 10,000-15,000 signatures).  When activists achieve those additional signatures — the question will go onto the 2016 statewide ballot that November.

"The costs to get an initiative petition on the ballot are substantial, usually well in excess of a million dollars."

That's certainly news to us at CLT who have had considerable experience with the initiative/referendum process over decades of success.  "A million dollars"?!?  I don't know of many if any petition drive organizations that have spent a fraction of that!  If it took a million dollars we wouldn't have Proposition 2½, the income tax rollback, and so many others.  And we are not unique nobody has ever spent a million dollars to get a question on the ballot!

17 days of actual Olympics traffic gridlock but seven years of construction traffic gridlock for 17 days of actual Olympics.  Sheesh, we just got through a decade of Big Dig traffic gridlock (and massive taxpayer-funded cost overruns).  Just suck it up, Boston 2024 tells us:  “People adjust," sniffed Daniel Doctoroff, who led New York City's unsuccessful bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

With any luck, at its meeting today the U.S. Olympic Committee will reject Boston as its sacrificial host city and look elsewhere.

We can only hope.  We'll know soon enough.  If a petition drive is still necessary we'll let you know and how you can assist.

 

Chip Ford

Boston 2024
NUMBER 5:  POLITICAL & PUBLIC SUPPORT
2.7 Potential Forced Referendum

Could you be forced into a referendum by opponents to the bid? If so, what would the legal implications be if the referendum were negative?

There is no applicable referendum process in Massachusetts.

The Massachusetts Constitution does provide a state-wide initiative petition process to allow citizens to propose laws for approval by the electorate. Utilization of such process by opponents to the bid is possible, but would require overcoming substantial obstacles including intense use of resources, significant financial expenditures, legal challenges and extensive lead time. Every cycle, many petitions may be filed, but very few end up on the ballot.

To get an initiative petition on the ballot at any time is a protracted process. First, the petition must be submitted by ten voters to the Attorney General, who determines whether the petition meets the applicable constitutional requirements. Among other things, the Massachusetts Constitution prohibits any initiative petition that relates to religion, the power of the courts, a particular town, city or other political division or to particular districts or localities of the Commonwealth, specific appropriations of funds, or is inconsistent with certain constitutional rights.

Second, if certified by the Attorney General, tens of thousands of signatures must be gathered and certified (this year it was 68,911) and the initiative petition must go to the Massachusetts state legislature, which may enact the petition, offer a substitute or take no action. If no action is taken, over ten thousand additional certified signatures must be obtained in order for the petition to be placed on the ballot at the next biennial state election, which is held on even years.

The costs to get an initiative petition on the ballot are substantial, usually well in excess of a million dollars.

In addition, opponents to an initiative petition have multiple opportunities to object and intervene throughout the process at every step, including through reviewing signatures for proper certification and working with the Attorney General to safeguard that summaries and explanations of the petition are appropriate, fair and accurate. Initiative petition opponents also may pursue court challenges, as is necessary.

If an initiative petition were to prevail, opponents to the petition could seek to have the legislature amend or repeal the petition’s decree through new legislation.

The initiative petition process generally takes a minimum of two years in order to satisfactorily complete the many burdensome steps. Although technically possible to have a ballot initiative in 2016, given the onerous process, any initiative petition advanced by opponents to Boston 2024 would likely not appear on the ballot before November 2018.

 


 

The Boston Globe
Friday, July 24, 2015

Clashing visions of Games offered at debate
Pointed exchanges focus on traffic, financing, priorities for city
By Michael Levenson


The prospect of Boston gleaming on the world stage, flush with jobs and served by an upgraded transit system, clashed with dire warnings about nightmarish traffic, steep cost overruns, and misplaced priorities in a sometimes testy debate Thursday between Olympic organizers and opponents.

The chairman of Boston 2024 and a top official at the US Olympic Committee, under pressure to raise the bid’s sagging poll numbers, ardently defended their budget and commitment to transparency, and said Boston should use the Olympics to spark long-needed improvements.

“We need to move Boston forward. The Olympics can be a catalyst to do that,” said Steve Pagliuca, the Boston 2024 chairman, Bain Capital executive, and co-owner of the Boston Celtics. “Our biggest risk is not taking advantage of the opportunity.”

But that Olympic pitch came under near-relentless attacks from the co-chair of No Boston Olympics and a Smith College economist, Andrew Zimbalist, who said Boston 2024’s budget figures were fueled by “drunken optimism.”

“We have an important past and a bright future. We got that way by thinking big but also thinking smart,” said Christopher Dempsey, the No Boston Olympics co-chairman and a former Bain & Co. consultant. “We’re better off passing on Boston 2024’s risky sales pitch.”

The hour-long debate, sponsored by the Globe and Fox 25, drilled deeply into the minutiae of Olympic finances, with squabbles erupting over the value of MBTA air rights and tax subsidies per square foot for a decking that would need to be built for the Olympic Stadium at Widett Circle.

But the debate also featured some pointed and personal barbs, reflecting how the divisive the Olympic bid has become in Boston since the city was chosen by the USOC in January.

One heated exchange centered on the potential for traffic jams during the Games.

“I have been to six Olympics,” said Daniel Doctoroff, a USOC board member and a former deputy mayor of New York who led that city’s unsuccessful bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics. “In every single one, there was dramatically less traffic than in the same city in the prior year or in any other time.”

But Dempsey said that traffic was light because the mayors of host cities often told their largest employers to keep their workers home during the Games.

Seeking to appeal to the hometown audience, he painted Doctoroff as an out-of-town Olympic honcho trying to dictate Boston’s future.

“For you to come up from New York and tell us you have a better way to run our city,” Dempsey scolded, as Doctoroff waved away the jab and asserted that even skeptical host cities end up loving the Olympics.

“In fact, if you go back to the cities and ask people in the cities, are they glad that they hosted the Olympics, it’s overwhelmingly, yes,” he said.

Zimbalist was often the aggressor, persistently skewering what he described as Boston 2024’s sloppy budgeting. He contended, for example, that the bid does not account for the cost of government services that would be needed if Boston 2024 transforms Widett Circle into a thriving new neighborhood.

“You don’t have a penny in there for schools,” Zimbalist said. “There’s not a penny in there for fire services. There’s not a penny in there for police services.”

Pagliuca said that millions of dollars in additional tax revenue from the new development would pay for those services. He repeatedly accused Olympic opponents of using “scare tactics” and “hyperbole” in their attempt to scuttle what he called a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Turning to the central issue of taxpayer risk, opponents said that if there were no danger of cost overruns, Boston 2024 should not require the city to sign a financial guarantee to cover the costs the Games.

Doctoroff said, however, that the guarantee is necessary if Boston is to compete against Paris, Rome, Budapest, and Hamburg, all of which have governments that would heavily subsidize their Olympic bids. Denying rumors that the USOC might drop Boston’s bid if poll numbers do not improve, Doctoroff flatly said, “Boston’s our city.”

Pressed on the issue of transparency, Pagliuca said that the group would release on Friday a completely unredacted version of the original bid it submitted to the USOC in December.

The group had for months refused to release the bid in its entirety. Under pressure from the City Council, which was threatening to subpoena it, Boston 2024 relented on Wednesday and said it would release a full version.

Thursday’s debate, moderated by Maria Stephanos of Fox 25 and Sacha Pfeiffer of the Globe, marks the start of a critical two-month period that could determine the fate of the faltering bid.

In mid-August, a consulting firm hired by the state plans to issue its analysis of the potential for cost overruns and financial liabilities the state could face if Boston hosted the Games.

The report could determine whether Governor Charlie Baker, who has remained steadfastly neutral on the bid, decides to support the Olympic effort and give it a much-needed boost or whether he opposes it, which could effectively kill the project.

Then US Olympic Committee must decide by Sept. 15 whether to send a letter to the International Olympic Committee that would officially nominate Boston as the US bid city for the 2024 Games, with the winner selected in 2017.

At the USOC’s board meeting last month, chairman Larry Probst effusively praised Boston 2024’s bid but said the committee remains concerned about the lack of public support and wants poll numbers to improve, “the sooner, the better.”

Probst said he would like support at 50 percent “relatively soon” and in the mid-60s by 2017. Mayor Martin J. Walsh has indicated he would like support reach 70 percent in Boston.

The most recent poll, by WBUR in July, showed 40 percent of voters statewide supported the bid, while 50 percent opposed. In Boston 44 percent were in favor and 48 percent were opposed.

After lurching from controversy to controversy, including winter storms that undermined the public’s confidence in the transit system, the group shook up its leadership team in May. Boston 2024 named Pagliuca as its chairman, replacing John Fish, the hard-charging construction executive who was the founder and driving force behind the effort.

Pagliuca moved quickly to try to push Boston 2024 past its rocky start. In late June, he unveiled “Bid 2.0,” a revised plan that put a greater emphasis on the benefits that Olympic organizers believe Boston would reap long after the Games.

The updated blueprint laid out plans to build two new neighborhoods with thousands of housing units at Widett Circle in South Boston, where the temporary Olympic Stadium would be built, and at Columbia Point in Dorchester, where the Olympic Village would be located.

Bid leaders also sprinkled venues across the state, relocating as far away as Western Massachusetts and New Bedford.

Critics have pointed out that even the revised bid did not answer all the outstanding questions. It had no location for an Olympic velodrome, aquatic center, or 1-million-square-foot media center, three of the largest and costliest venues at past Games.

Bid leaders have said they are still searching for appropriate sites for those venues.


The Boston Globe
Friday, July 24, 2015

Olympic debate lacked what we wanted to hear
By Dan Shaughnessy


Memorable debates.

There was Lincoln-Douglas. Kennedy-Nixon. Will Ferrell’s “Frank the Tank” vs. James Carville in “Old School.”

And now Steve Pagliuca and Daniel Doctoroff vs. Chris Dempsey and Andrew Zimbalist in the Boston 2024 Olympic debate, which aired Thursday night on Fox 25.

We tuned in hoping for one of those famous debate moments — something like Gerald Ford claiming there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, or Ronald Reagan stating, “I am paying for this microphone." We would have even settled for Pags spanking Dempsey with, “I knew Red Auerbach. Red Auerbach was a friend of mine. You, sir, are no Red Auerbach."

The best we got was Zimbalist saying, “Most of the numbers I look at reflect drunken optimism."

Ouch. That one hurt.

This was a debate dominated by skull-imploding talk about the all-important financial issues. Both sides bombarded us with numbers. It was like trying to make sense of the “science” of Deflategate. You’d need a Ken Burns 10-part series to shed light on all the flaws in the Boston 2024 blueprint, but we had to settle for one hour.

Thursday’s showdown unfolded in a TV studio with no public audience. That’s the way the Boston 2024 likes it. It would not have been good for the pro-Olympic folks to hear Hub hostility aimed at Messrs. Pagliuca and Doctoroff. The debate was moderated by Fox 25’s Maria Stephanos and the Globe’s Sacha Pfeiffer.

Most of you know Steve Pagliuca. Nice guy. Co-owner of the Celtics. Ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate. He comes across as smart, a tad boring, but sincere. The same cannot be said of USOC board member Daniel Doctoroff. Doctoroff is the guy who tried to get the bid for New York. He is a New Yorker. He spent most of Thursday’s debate telling us what’s good for us.

Dempsey is co-chair of No Boston Olympics. He has amazing teeth and did a pretty good job for the contrarian side. He was joined by Zimbalist, a noted blowhard, author, and Smith professor of economics who hates the idea of the Olympics coming to Boston.

I’m with the NIMBY crowd on this one. I think bringing the Olympics to Boston is the worst idea since the Red Sox decided to put Hanley Ramirez in left and give Rick Porcello an $82.5 million contract extension.

Pags got things started by denying that the new transparency of Boston 2024 was motivated by the urgency of Thursday’s debate.

“We want to put things out that are right, not just quick," said Pagliuca. Well-meaning Pags quickly segued into his senatorial speech pattern (the time-share pitch) that makes folks glaze over. Stephanos and Pfeiffer tried to reign him in, but it’s not easy once Pags gets going.

Dempsey spoke first for No Boston, saying, “The more people learn about this bid, the less they like it ... ”

When Pfeiffer asked Dempsey why NBO would not release names of all who contributed to his group, he said, “It’s important to protect the little guy," citing potential retribution, presumably from the big shots pushing Boston 2024.

Speaking for the USOC, Doctoroff denied Boston might lose the bid to Los Angeles: “Rumors are rumors. They were never true. We were not looking at LA. Boston is our city." This will be a handy quote to resurrect if the USOC pulls the bid from Boston in September.

Doctoroff also predicted, “Revenue numbers will be achieved."

When Dempsey asked, “If they are so confident with their budget projections, why are they asking for a taxpayer guarantee?" Pagliuca claimed the No Boston folks were engaging in hyperbole.

Pfeiffer scored points when she moved the topic from economics to good old-fashioned traffic. That’s when Doctoroff said traffic jams disappeared in LA during the 1984 Games and told us, “People adjust."

“What about the seven years leading up when all the construction happens?" asked Zimbalist.

Bingo. Big point for No Boston Olympics.

Doctoroff got more annoying as the debate unfolded (“Chris, you’re confusing things again”). When Dempsey noted that there’s still no proposed location for the aquatic center or velodrome, Doctoroff talked about a temporary pool and a temporary velodrome, adding, “This team is actually quite far along."

Wow.

It got worse for Pags and the Doc in the closing minutes. Every time the No Boston guys raised legitimate points, the Boston 2024 guys would charge hyperbole.

It was “a robust discussion, for sure," Pagliuca said in his closing statement.

Dempsey closed with, “Boston 2024 is asking taxpayers to sign a guarantee to cover cost overruns ... we’re better off passing on Boston 2024’s risky sales pitch."

Amen to that.

In my view, there are only two groups of folks who favor bringing the Olympics to Boston: 1. People who stand to profit; 2. Hopelessly naive people. I’m putting Pags into category No. 2. He doesn’t need this. He’s doing it because he believes in it.

Here’s hoping the USOC pulls the plug on the Boston bid. I don’t believe Doctoroff when he says those rumors were never true.

Putting Doctoroff on this panel was just the latest in a long line of blunders by the hapless folks from Boston 2024. We lived through the winter of 2014-15. We tolerate the clunky MBTA and ever-clogged roadways. We don’t need to have a rich guy from New York tell us that “people adjust."

No thanks, Boston 2024.


The Boston Globe
Friday, July 24, 2015

It’s time for Baker to weigh in on Boston 2024
By Shirley Leung


Charlie Baker, put us out of our misery.

Bid 2.0 is in, the polls are out, the prime-time debate is over, and soon you will have the Brattle Group report vetting the plan to host the 2024 Summer Games.

Once that report is done, you should have everything you need to say whether we should go for the gold — or stay home. Your opinion matters because you hold the purse strings — and as everyone knows, hosting the Olympics ain’t cheap.

Let’s face it: Our Olympic bid is on life support. Boston 2024 chairman Steve Pagliuca has put out the best plan he can under the circumstances, yet public support remains lackluster.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh has been the public sector’s biggest Olympic cheerleader, but he can’t go it alone.

So, governor, either pull the plug — or breathe new life into this thing. Don’t let us muddle along in a coma-like state.

Up until now, your political instincts have told you to stay far away — and rightly so. Just look at what’s happening to Walsh and the Boston City Council with an inane fight over the original — and obsolete — bid documents. Whether a supporter or opponent, the Olympics finds a way to embarrass and embroil officials in controversy.

Instead you’ve remained neutral, telling reporters that the bid is a “great planning exercise.”

So no harm in playing coy, right?

Actually, we deserve more than a maybe. We elect governors to make tough decisions, not avoid them.

It would be politically expedient to say there are pros and cons to hosting the Games and keep playing this down the middle.

You could even say it’s up to the voters — and support, which you love to do, a ballot initiative. But we didn’t elect you to collect signatures outside Star Market.

Millions of private dollars have already been spent organizing the Boston bid, and a referendum would eat up yet more time and money. But a petition drive would only be worth pursuing if we knew the governor is behind the Games. Otherwise it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

No doubt this will be one of the most difficult decisions of your nascent administration. That’s why you signed off on spending up to $250,000 to have the Brattle Group, a Cambridge consultancy, evaluate the costs and benefits of hosting the Olympics and for what taxpayers might be on the hook.

Saying no to the Summer Games won’t sit well with your new BFF, Mayor Walsh. You already put on hold the $1 billion expansion of the Southie convention center, something the mayor wanted done. It will be hard to say no to him twice.

Opposing the Games would also upset companies and business leaders, including key political supporters, who have raised more than $14 million to craft the bid.

But the Olympic dream is not yours. You didn’t come to Beacon Hill to chase a grand vision. You wanted to create jobs, improve schools, strengthen communities, and make government work better. In other words, fixing the Health Connector website and shortening the lines at the RMV are your kind of priorities.

“It might not be as sexy as what a lot of other people want to talk about it, but at the end of the day, for most of the people who are out there, it really matters,” you recently told my Globe colleague Joshua Miller.

But if you wanted to save the Olympics, you could do it. When you ran Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, you brought it back from the brink of bankruptcy. And as governor, you’re putting in bold reforms to fix the MBTA.

You love challenges, and Boston’s Olympic bid is full of them. We face stiff competition from Paris, Rome, Budapest, and others. The United States Olympic Committee will be watching closely to see if you bring out the pom poms — or sit on the sidelines.

The USOC will need to know by Sept. 15, the deadline for officially nominating an American city. The Boston bid will need the support of the governor to move to the next round.

Don’t keep everyone guessing.


The Boston Herald
Friday, July 24, 2015

Area mayors: Olympics our problem, too
By Erin Smith, Hillary Chabot


As a potential Olympic traffic nightmare looms, some mayors who could bear the brunt of hosting events are raising concerns Boston 2024 hasn’t been keeping them in the loop.

Lowell Mayor Rodney M. Elliott wants Olympic officials to provide more details quickly because the city is expected to host rowing and taekwondo.

“It would be nice to have some definitive answers as soon as possible, so we can start planning,” Elliott said. “Traffic is really a concern to us. We are already at capacity now with the bridges. We’d have to take a serious look at the games if there isn’t anything done to address that.”

The Herald reported yesterday Boston 2024 hasn’t released projections on how much traffic the Summer Games would add to the highway system, which already faces a projected 70 percent increase in freight trucks on state roads by 2030.

Experts have predicted more bottlenecks with special VIP lanes on roads and highways connecting Olympic events — an undetermined route because at least half a dozen major venue locations are still unknown.

Boston 2024 CEO Richard Davey, who has suggested housing Olympic workers on cruise ships to cut congestion, said traffic projections are necessary for large-scale developments — not the Olympics, which are not permanent. He said a detailed plan would come after all venues are known.

Somerville Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone said Olympic planners should have more direct contact with area leaders, even in communities without proposed venues.

“I have great respect for Boston 2024 and the people involved, but, as an approach, there has been a tremendous failure to engage leaders in the region,” Curtatone said on Boston Herald Radio yesterday. “I am hopeful they can still do that. This has to be bigger than Boston. ... It can’t just be the inside power brokers or political brokers of Beacon Hill.”

Melrose Mayor Robert J. Dolan said he was invited to a public meeting with a few other local mayors but has had no direct contact with Boston 2024.

“This is why their poll numbers are low,” Dolan said. “Average citizens do not understand how it will benefit them, and the best way to get that message out is through local mayors and selectmen.”

Quincy officials said Boston 2024 met with Mayor Thomas P. Koch before announcing beach volleyball slated for Squantum Point Park.

Koch spokesman Christopher Walker said, “Even if you take the site away, there would need to be a discussion around infrastructure, particularly the Red Line, and how the logistics of holding an event on this scale would impact the outskirts of Boston.”

Jack Encarnacao and Chris Villani contributed to this report.


The Boston Herald
Thursday, July 23, 2015

Paving the road to an Olympic sized traffic ‘migraine’
By Jack Encarnacao and Erin Smith


The proposed 2024 Summer Games could bring gridlock and bottlenecks to the Bay State’s already jammed highways, as motorists are excluded from miles of special VIP lanes and congestion worsens from an increase of freight trucks on the road.

Boston 2024 still has not released any projections on how much traffic the 17-day, $4.6 billion games would add to the highway system.

Olympic organizers plan to shut down at least one lane of traffic on any road or highway connecting sporting events, which include venues in Boston, New Bedford, Lowell and Worcester. The express VIP lanes are expected to include I-93 and the Pike, but it’s unclear exactly how many other roadways could become bottlenecks because officials haven’t yet announced locations for a velodrome, aquatics center, golf, preliminary basketball games or a media center.

Boston 2024 CEO Richard Davey defended the mandated so-called Olympic Route Network, saying the private lanes, which would only be in use when needed, have “proven to be efficient for the Olympics and also proven to be fairly innocuous for the city residents.”

Davey also predicted that congestion will be avoided because people who don’t have to drive will stay off the roads during the Olympics and summer traffic is typically lighter.

“We looked at other Olympics Games over the last 20, 30 years, and every city’s experienced a drop in traffic somewhere 
between 5 and 50 percent,” 
Davey said.

“We also know just based on (state) traffic counts in and around the city of Boston that, in the summertime, traffic falls by about 10 percent.”

But traffic on Bay State highways is only expected to grow between now and 2024. The volume of freight trucks moving within or through Massachusetts will increase 70 percent between 2007 and 2030, according to the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization’s 2010 freight study.

Another study by the agency noted that of all freight transported in Massachusetts, nearly 94 percent is carried by truck — much higher than the 78 percent national average.

“Show us the facts,” said Doug Foy, a former state official who oversaw transportation for Boston’s 2004 Democratic National Convention. “Show us the analysis that actually can answer the questions of how we’re going to move all these people around, and in what modes and whether we’re equipped to deal with it.”

Boston already has two truck bottlenecks among the nation’s top 100 on I-95 and I-93 — both pegged for Olympic VIP lanes, said Rebecca Brewster of the American Transportation Research Institute

“There’s no question you can’t have a Super Bowl or Olympics without truck deliveries,” she said. “You have to get the food there and the hotels and hospitals supplied.”

But Anne Lynch of the Massachusetts Motor Transportation Association said Olympics officials have yet to reach out to the state’s trucking industry, which employs more than 120,000 people. Lynch said the Olympics could impede deliveries at a time of heightened demand. “You’re going to have two problems: less access and more needs.”

Former state Transportation Secretary and MIT lecturer Fred Salvucci said, “The Southeast Expressway is a disaster, there’s no explanation about how they’re going to upgrade that sufficiently to handle what they’re talking about. Every time we’ve had to deal with the Southeast Expressway over the past 40 years ... it’s a migraine headache, and a lot of planning had to go into providing substitute service and staging the construction to minimize the impact.”


The Boston Globe
Friday, July 24, 2015

Opposition, vote downplayed in initial Olympics bid
By Michael Levenson and Mark Arsenault


Boston Olympics organizers strongly downplayed the prospects for a referendum on the Games, and characterized the opposition as a small band of doubters, in their winning pitch to the US Olympic Committee in December, according to newly released documents.

The complete version of Boston 2024’s initial bid, which the group released Friday, reveals several sections that have been hidden from the public for months, including information about venue costs, fund-raising strategies, and the roadblocks the group might face.

One of the redacted sections sought to assure the USOC that it would be exceedingly difficult for critics of the Games to launch a ballot campaign to block the bid.

Boston 2024 officials told the USOC that it would cost “in excess of a million dollars” to launch a ballot campaign and that “opponents to an initiative petition have multiple opportunities to object and intervene throughout the process at every step, including through reviewing signatures for proper certification.”

“Although technically possible to have a ballot initiative in 2016, given the onerous process, any initiative petition advanced by opponents to Boston 2024 would likely not appear on the ballot before November 2018,” Boston Olympics organizers wrote.

Months after making that argument, Boston 2024 bowed to the mounting opposition to its bid and agreed to propose its own referendum for the November 2016 ballot.

In the unredacted bid documents released Friday, Boston 2024 also told the USOC that it did not believe that the opposition group No Boston Olympics was formidable.

“Four local activists formed a group in opposition to our bid, and while we respect their differing views and their right to promote them, our polling data shows that they do not represent the majority of public opinion,” Boston 2024 wrote. “No elected official has publicly endorsed the group, they have not received significant financial backing and their efforts have been limited to social media.”

At the time, polls did indicate that a majority of residents supported the Games. Since then, the tide has shifted, however, and most residents now oppose the bid. No Boston Olympics has also become a prominent voice in the debate, sparring on stage with bid leaders in a televised debate on Thursday.

The full bid documents also show that Boston 2024’s original plan contained a $4.7 billion operating budget that was short about $471 million, with only $4.2 billion in revenue accounted for. The committee’s new budget, released in June, identified $4.8 billion in revenue and projects a surplus.

No Boston Olympics issued a statement on Friday blasting bid leaders for withholding the information.

“The release of Boston 2024’s unredacted bid documents confirm that the boosters have been saying one thing behind closed doors, and an entirely different thing to Massachusetts taxypayers,” the group said. “The redactions made in January show that the documents were whitewashed to remove any mention of existing opposition to the bid, and to conceal budget estimates that indicated the Games may operate at a deficit. Boston 2024 is asking for a taxpayer guarantee to cover overruns, but they have not earned the public’s trust.”

Boston 2024’s chairman, Steve Pagliuca, who took over in May, after the initial bid was submitted to the USOC, said it was intended only to show that Boston was capable of staging the Games.

“The preliminary bid book was intended to serve as a ‘proof of concept’ – a general demonstration that Boston can, in fact, serve as host city,” he said in a statement. “While it served that purpose well, it was not meant to be a final or operable plan.”

The original bid, which has come to be known as version 1.0, was submitted to the United States Olympic Committee in December, as part of the domestic competition to become the US bid city for the 2024 Games. At the time Boston was competing with Washington, D.C., San Francisco and two-time Olympics host Los Angeles.

After being chosen by the USOC in January, Boston 2024 struggled with how to share the documents. Pressured by the media, the committee first suggested it would make the bid book available for reporters to read, but not to copy and publish. Then the committee agreed to make the documents public after redacting what it called proprietary information that could pose a competitive disadvantage if released.

When a portion of the unredacted documents came out in May, Boston 2024 was heavily criticized for removing from the public version a proposal for public financing for land and infrastructure at Widett Circle, site of a proposed temporary Olympics stadium.

Boston 2024 in June issued a new Olympics plan, called version 2.0, which the committee says replaces the original plan entirely. However, Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson insisted the remaining redactions from the original bid be made public, creating another public relations headache for the committee. Jackson this week tried to persuade the council to subpoena the documents, and Mayor Martin J. Walsh urged the committee to release the full bid.

Questioned Thursday at a Boston Globe/Fox 25 debate, bid chairman Steve Pagliuca said the documents would be made public Friday.

“Although initially private due to confidential and competitive concerns, we agree that the public and the City Council ought to be able to review this information,” Pagliuca said.


State House News Service
Friday, July 24, 2015

Release of additional bid info feeds Olympics debate
By Colin A. Young and Andy Metzger


When it released a redacted version of its bid documents months ago, the private organization working to bring the 2024 Summer Olympic Games to Boston removed sections that detailed the opposition to its bid, information related to a potential forced referendum process, and charts that detailed its financial projections.

On Friday, after a week that saw the Boston City Council debate subpoenaing the original bid document and Boston Mayor Martin Walsh calling for its release, Boston 2024 released the full version of its "Bid 1.0," which was submitted to the U.S. Olympic Committee in December.

Redactions and edits had appeared throughout the previously released documents, removing detailed financial information, much of which could now be moot given that Olympics proponents have advanced a new version of the bid.

The initial bid submitted to the U.S. Olympic Committee referred to a need for an "additional $471M in revenues," a figure that was excised from the version later released to the public.

The initial description of the "financially responsible" plans for creation of a temporary 60,000-seat Olympic Stadium, said it would be the catalyst for 7 million square feet of retail, hotel, residential and office space, and said the stadium would be replaced "with middle income housing."

The version subsequently released to the public omitted the square footage and said the stadium would be replaced by "a mix of uses." More recent renderings of the long-term plans for the stadium development, at what is now Widett Circle, show a park on the footprint of the stadium.

"The preliminary bid book was intended to serve as a 'proof of concept' - a general demonstration that Boston can, in fact, serve as host city," Boston 2024 Chairman Steve Pagliuca said in a statement. "While it served that purpose well, it was not meant to be a final or operable plan. With extensive community input, we released an updated plan on June 29 for hosting the Games, and, with the benefit of continued community engagement, we're confident our bid will continue to evolve and improve."

Opponents of the Olympic bid said Friday that Boston 2024 has not earned the public's trust and intentionally concealed information when it make the bid documents public earlier this year.

"The release of Boston 2024's unredacted bid documents confirm that the boosters have been saying one thing behind closed doors, and an entirely different thing to Massachusetts taxypayers (sic)," No Boston Olympics said in a statement. "The redactions made in January show that the documents were whitewashed to remove any mention of existing opposition to the bid, and to conceal budget estimates that indicated the Games may operate at a deficit."

In the complete version of the initial bid package, Boston 2024 described its opposition as "four local activists" who formed a group that, "no elected official has publicly endorsed...they have not received significant financial backing and their efforts have been limited to social media."

"We've been characterized as a David and Goliath situation from the beginning, but arguably we've made some impact in this debate," No Boston Olympics co-chair Kelley Gossett said. "We are committed to continuing our effort while highlighting the risks associated with Boston 2024's bid."

Boston 2024 also told the USOC that its own polling data indicated that opponents to the games were in the minority, pointing to a September 2014 poll of Boston residents that showed 60 percent support for the bid.

"Bidding for and hosting the Games in the Boston area are generally popular ideas. Support is consistent across the Commonwealth, and over the past seven months, we have seen this support grow steadily as residents begin to learn more about a potential Olympics in the Boston area," the group wrote in a section of the report that had already been made public.

The January release of bid documents also omitted a page concerning the possibility that the group could be forced into a referendum by opponents to the bid.

In the material provided to the USOC but not made public until Friday, Boston 2024 detailed the steps a group would have to take in order to bring the Olympic bid to a ballot question.

Earlier this week, Citizens for a Say Chairman Evan Falchuk, and Tank Taxes for Olympics co-chairs Marty Lamb, Steve Aylward and Rep. Shaunna O'Connell began that process by filing initiative petition language with the attorney general's office with the goal of placing a binding question on the November 2016 ballot. The proposed question would bar the use of public funds for the Olympics.

"Although technically possible to have a ballot initiative in 2016, given the onerous process, any initiative petition advanced by opponents to Boston 2024 would likely not appear on the ballot before November 2018," Olympic boosters wrote in the redacted section of the proposal.

Boston 2024 also noted that Olympic supporters would have "multiple opportunities to object and intervene throughout the process at every step." They wrote opponents to an initiative petition could review referendum signatures for "proper certification" and "may also pursue court challenges."

"Boston 2024 is afraid of a ballot question, and they've outlined a detailed plan to fight back against any effort to have one," Falchuck said in a statement Friday.

Even if such a petition were to prevail, Olympic supporters "could seek to have the legislature amend or repeal the petition's decree through new legislation," Boston 2024 wrote.

The topic of potential legislation was not limited to a hypothetical ballot question in the Boston Olympic bid.

In the version of the bid that was submitted to the USOC, Boston 2024 said it "anticipates proposal of comprehensive Olympic legislation to facilitate venues and transportation in a unified manner."

In the version released publicly months ago, the group said it "could envision" such a proposal.

Perhaps knowing that it would be in need of special legislation at some point, Boston 2024, in a portion of the bid that was released to the public earlier this year, wrote, "Support from current Senate President Therese Murray (D-Plymouth), Senate Majority Leader Stanley Rosenberg (D-Amherst), who will become Senate President in January, Speaker of the House Robert DeLeo (D-Winthrop) and members of the Boston Legislative Delegation represents important bipartisan leadership on Beacon Hill that will strengthen our plan to engage legislators across the Commonwealth in the coming months."


The Boston Globe
Sunday, July 26, 2015

USOC wants stronger backing from Walsh, Baker on Olympic bid
By Mark Arsenault


The US Olympic Committee is pressing Governor Charlie Baker and Mayor Martin J. Walsh to put more of their political capital behind Boston’s struggling bid for the 2024 Olympic Games, but neither politician appears ready to satisfy the USOC, according to a person close to the bid process.

With USOC members set to discuss Boston’s status at a board meeting Monday, the standoff raises new questions about the fate of a bid already in peril due to low poll numbers.

USOC members want the popular governor to endorse the bid, the person close to the process said, which could breathe new life and credibility into the city’s effort.

The board is also pressuring Walsh, an Olympic backer, to announce that he will sign the host city contract required by the International Olympic Committee, which would put city taxpayers on the hook if the Games ran short of money or suffered cost overruns, the person said.

Baker is expected to call into the USOC meeting. A Baker adviser said Saturday that the governor’s message to USOC would be that he would have no news for them until he reviewed the findings of the Brattle Group, a consultant the state hired to vet the Olympic plan released a month ago by Boston 2024, the local Olympic bid committee.

Baker has said he expects the consulting report next month.

“I get the fact that everybody would love us to just sort of, you know, ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ today,” Baker said in a press conference Friday.

For Walsh, the host city guarantee is a difficult political issue. Olympic opponents have built their campaign against the Games around the guarantee, arguing that taxpayers should not be put at risk for an international sports festival.

Walsh has said he wants to be sure the taxpayers would be protected from loss before he agrees to sign the agreement.

Boston 2024 has promised to protect the city through conservative budgeting and a wide-ranging insurance package. The bid committee released details about its insurance plan last week.

The plan calls for multiple policies providing hundreds of millions of dollars in coverage for revenue losses due to a disaster, terrorism, declining ticket revenue, loss of sponsors, and other risks.

It said contractors would be required to have insurance, including surety bonds, which would compel an insurer to pay to finish a project if the contractor falters.

The larger development projects could have capital replacement insurance, which would pay to keep a project going if funding fell through.

The committee’s $4.6 billion Olympic operating budget accounts for $128 million in insurance premiums.

But the complex insurance plan is only days old and Walsh is unlikely to back it before a thorough vetting by the city’s in-house Olympics analyst, and perhaps outside consultants.

The USOC believes any bid for the Games would be substantially weaker if a host city refused to guarantee to deliver the Games as promised.

The guarantee is generally a difficult political issue in the United States, where government support for the Olympics is limited.

A USOC spokesman declined to comment Saturday.

A month ago, speculation mounted ahead of the USOC’s quarterly meeting that the Boston bid might be pulled, mostly due to poll numbers languishing in the low 40s.

Shortly before the meeting, USOC leaders, including chairman Larry Probst and chief executive Scott Blackmun, came to Boston to view details of Boston 2024’s new Olympic plan, developed under the leadership of new bid chairman Steve Pagliuca, who took over the committee in May.

The USOC members praised the plan, which would give rise to two new Boston neighborhoods at Widett Circle and Columbia Point.

The bid survived the board meeting, though the USOC said it wanted to see poll numbers improve.

One month later, public polls are not dramatically different.

The USOC faces a September deadline to formally nominate a bid city to compete internationally for the 2024 Summer Games.

Speculation that the USOC would drop Boston for two-time Olympic host Los Angeles has dogged the Boston bid for months, despite strong denials from the Olympic committee.

The IOC will choose the 2024 host in a vote scheduled for 2017 in Lima.

The US has not hosted a Summer Games since 1996, in Atlanta.

Paris, Rome, Hamburg, and Budapest are expected to bid for the 2024 Games.


The Boston Globe
Sunday, July 26, 2015

Lack of public support leaves Boston bid in precarious position
By John Powers


Pick a number, any number between 66 and 90. That’s the percentage of public support that the International Olympic Committee customarily wants to see from cities bidding for the Games. That’s where Boston would need to be by the time the Lords of the Rings choose their 2024 summer site in September 2017. That’s where Chicago was (67 percent) when the IOC polled local residents eight months before it selected Rio de Janeiro for 2016. That’s the desired minimum of civic support required if a city is to turn itself upside-down for seven years and spend billions of dollars for a five-ringed festival that lasts for 17 days.

Rio’s number was a whopping 85 percent in the city and 69 percent across Brazil. Tokyo, the 2020 host, was at 70 percent. Beijing and Almaty, the two remaining candidates for Friday’s vote for the 2022 Winter Games, were at 88 and 85 percent, respectively — with the national numbers (92 and 87) even higher — when the IOC released its assessment report last month.

Admittedly, public support in authoritarian states such as China and Kazakhstan tends to be significantly higher than it does in places where the citizenry feels free to criticize the government. “The IOC understands that in developed democracies the numbers you get and the numbers you get in Kazakhstan are not the same,” observes Canadian member Dick Pound.

Still, when American members Larry Probst, Anita DeFrantz, and Angela Ruggiero and Boston 2024 representatives are in Malaysia for next week’s IOC annual session, they’ll be informally queried about polling numbers that still are in the low 40s with the application deadline coming up in mid-September. If they don’t approach break-even by then, the USOC could yank the bid and opt for 2028 when an American city likely could have the Games for the asking.

Probst, the USOC chairman, said last month that “we obviously want to see a positive trend and the sooner the better,” particularly with a binding statewide referendum proposed for next year. Historically public support has been only one of nearly a dozen factors, from venues to transportation to security to the environment, that the IOC evaluation commission considers when it puts together its briefing book for the 100 members.

But in the wake of a rush for the exits over the last two years by a half-dozen of the original 2022 contenders, polling numbers have become decidedly more important. There haven’t been two or fewer winter candidates since Lake Placid won in a walkover for 1980 and there were six for the 2006 Games that went to Turin.

There originally were at least eight prospective hosts again for 2022 but in the wake of Sochi’s $50 billion tab for 2014 all of the European contenders said nix. The IOC now admits that it should have made it much clearer that the bear’s share of the cost went for the massive infrastructure improvements — railways, roads, bridges, tunnels — required to modernize an outdated Black Sea summer resort and connect it to the mountains.

Yet the cost and complexity of staging the Games still proved daunting even to cities that could have handled them. Munich, the runner-up to Pyeongchang for 2018, would have been a ideal site with ice events in the city and snow events in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a perennial stop on the World Cup ski circuit. But voters in all of the venue districts said “nein” in November 2013 and Munich opted out.

So did Krakow, the Polish city that would have shared the Games with a Slovakian counterpart, after 70 percent of voters turned thumbs down. So did St. Moritz, the Swiss resort that hosted in 1948. So did Stockholm. And Oslo, the 1952 site that would have used Lillehammer’s Alpine and sliding venues from 1994, withdrew last autumn after voters did an about-face in a matter of months.

In every case, either the taxpayers said no or the politicians whom they elected figured that they would. That’s why cities with robust public support tend to become front-runners, as Paris is for 2024. The French, who disagree on which cheeses to select from the restaurant trolley, polled at 73 percent positive in the capital last month. No doubt, having hosted the summer Games twice (in 1900 and 1924) and contended for them in 1992, 2008, and 2012, helped to remove much of the public anxiety about plunging in again.

Even so, before the mayor and city council said “oui” last spring, the national Olympic committee commissioned a feasibility study to see whether an encore bid made sense. What has hampered Boston’s quest is that no serious public debate about the pros and cons of staging the Games was held before the city was selected as the American contender in January.

That silent period was at the urging of the USOC, which wanted potential cities to keep things on the down low until the committee decided whether or not it wanted to enter the 2024 chase. That didn’t happen until December and the Hub was tapped several weeks later.

It didn’t help the numbers when the original bid package given to the USOC listed proposed venues for neighborhoods whose support hadn’t yet been enlisted or that the version eventually given to the public was redacted. Nor did it help that the Boston 2024 partnership wasn’t sufficiently specific about what the taxpayers would and would not be on the hook for or who’d pay for the cost overruns that are routine for every Games.

It would have been welcome and wise had that been done months ago, even if the citizenry was preoccupied with digging itself out from a snowpile as big as Olympus. It’s mandatory now if the USOC and the partnership want to see those numbers inch upward. Boston is a skeptical, if not suspicious, town by nature and the absence of transparency historically has been taken as evidence of chicanery.

Releasing the original package on Friday, admittedly under duress, helped the bid committee’s credibility. And this week’s disclosure and explanation of the multiple insurance policies designed to protect the taxpayers — what chairman Steve Pagliuca calls the “belt and suspenders approach” — should do much to ease their legitimate concern that they’ll be handed the bill well after the rest of the world has left town and the stadium has been torn down and trucked away.

Should the governor conclude next month after seeing the independent Brattle Group’s study that the numbers indeed can work and the Games are a worthy public-private enterprise, his affirmation also should boost the numbers.

Sooner, they’ll need a 5 in front of them. Later, at least a 6. The IOC isn’t expecting a high 8. “Twenty-five percent of people will be against everything all the time,” Pound observed. But 40-something is a failing grade anywhere on the planet.


The Boston Herald
Sunday, July 26, 2015

Boston’s beleaguered bid at breaking point
USOC could vote tomorrow
By Joe Dwinell


The USOC will meet tomorrow on Boston’s shaky bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, where one board member told the Herald she won’t be surprised if the 17-day, $4.6 billion plan comes up for a fateful vote.

“We need to know how (Boston) is doing and if the people of the city are interested in hosting the games,” said Anita L. DeFrantz, a member of both the United States Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee.

“We need to get a report. I need to know,” DeFrantz told the Herald yesterday, voicing doubt about support for the games in the Hub.

DeFrantz, en route to an IOC meeting in Kuala Lumpur, declined to comment on a report from an Olympic writer in Malaysia that a vote is being called on Boston’s bid. But, she added, “I’ve learned to not be surprised by much” if it happens.

“We selected them and we’ll see what’s up,” she said.

As for speculation Los Angeles is poised to step in if the USOC backs away from Boston, DeFrantz said “L.A. is perpetually ready. It can host with only two years’ notice.”

The infrastructure is in place, she added of the City of Angels, and she pointed out the Special Olympics is being held in L.A. right now. The city also hosted the 1932 and 1984 Summer Games.

The Herald was told by another official that Boston’s bid is on the agenda for tomorrow’s USOC teleconference with its 16 members. A new member, Bob Wood of Colorado, is also being welcomed to the panel. Wood could not be reached for a comment.

Gov. Charlie Baker said he will also speak to the USOC tomorrow, but he repeated yesterday he will not make a decision about backing or not backing the games without the results of a state-commissioned independent study expected out next month.

“I said I would call into the meeting and give them an update on where we are,” Baker said during a stop in Mattapan. “That study’s going to be critical to our decision.”

Baker said the USOC has not been in contact with his office about what he’s expected to reveal tomorrow.

The IOC has set Sept. 15 as the day cities must commit to bidding for the 2024 Summer Games, with a final decision not coming until 2017 at its meeting in Lima, Peru.

Budapest, Hamburg, Paris and Rome — and possibly Toronto — are all also said to be vying to host the 2024 Summer Games.

Boston 2024, the organization headed by Celtics boss Steve Pagliuca, who is also managing partner of Bain Capital, did not comment last night on the USOC meeting.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh, also a backer of the city’s Olympic bid, declined to comment on the report of a possible USOC vote.

Jordan Graham and Laurel J. Sweet contributed to this report.

 

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml


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