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CLT UPDATE
Monday, July 27, 2015
The Boston Olympics Con Goes On
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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