Mayor Richard Daley insisted Thursday that Chicago has not committed taxpayers to cover unlimited losses if the city holds the 2016 Summer Olympics. “We go to $500 million, and that’s it,” the mayor told the Tribune during Olympics meetings in Switzerland.
A $500 million commitment would be nothing new. The City Council approved that two years ago. It’s part of a complicated deal involving private insurance and city and state promises to cover more than $2 billion in losses if the Olympics go deep in the red.
But the mayor also said this week that he will sign an agreement with the International Olympic Committee that assumes the responsibility for any losses incurred by the Games. Every Olympic city has done that since 1984.
So what really is the city’s commitment? Is it $500 million? Or bottomless?
Yo! City Council! Step in. The city’s entire Olympic bid needs a slow and careful vetting in your chambers.
This financial commitment is an extremely critical issue. The Chicago Olympic bid has a $4.8 billion budget for construction and operations, and it projects a profit. But recent experience in other cities shows that Olympic costs can skyrocket in stunning fashion. The 2012 Games in London are expected to cost nearly three times as much as first budgeted.
Daley says he doesn’t have to go back to the council for approval before he signs the host-city agreement in October because the city’s liability hasn’t increased.
Maybe it’s the distance — he’s over there across the Atlantic, and we’re all back here — but his assurances of the last two days just don’t ring true.
So the aldermen need to air all this at a hearing. A thorough hearing. And if the city is on the hook for more than the $500 million already approved, they need to insist on a vote. Ald. Manny Flores (1st) said he will propose an ordinance to limit the city’s exposure to what has already been approved. If the mayor hasn’t changed the terms, he should welcome that ordinance as a confidence boost for taxpayers.
Aldermen, you say you got burned on the city’s parking meter deal because you didn’t have time to learn about all the details. You had no chance, you say, to analyze what turning over 36,000 parking meters overnight to a private company would mean for Chicagoans, or to explore alternatives.
Well, you have time on this deal. The city won’t sign the Olympic agreement until shortly before the Oct. 2 decision by the IOC to award the Games. You have about three months to figure all this out.
We have supported the Olympics bid. We have supported it on the terms and conditions set forth by the city — including promises that venue construction would be privately financed and the city’s exposure for a loss would be capped at $500 million.
Everybody needs to be absolutely certain that those terms haven’t changed.
