The City Council yesterday voted 48-0 to purchase the Michael Reese Hospital site for $86 million—trusting Chicago 2016 committee head Patrick G. Ryan that they’d never have to pay a penny of it. Mayor Daley repeated his assertion that “not a dime” of taxpayer money would be spent bringing the Olympics to Chicago. This comes a few weeks in advance of the City Council vote to reaffirm the $500 million Olympic guarantee Chicago has promised should the Games fall short of intended revenue goals.
Even aside from revenue goals, however, contemporary evidence would indicate that Olympic budgets consistently fall short of actual costs. Already the pricetag on the London Olympic Games slated for 2012 has spiralled from 3.4 billion to 9.3 billion Pounds, or a rise from around $5 billion to over $14 billion. Committee member and Labour MP Don Touhig told the Daily Mail it was the “most catastrophic financial mismanagement in the history of the world”.
Lesser catastrophes are befalling our neighbors to the north, according to The Canadian Press. The Vancouver 2010 Games have been estimated to cost $600 Million, but an audit scheduled for last week has been withheld because the governmental bodies involved are refusing to report true costs. An estimated $170 million hangs in the balance.
Auditor general John Doyle asked the 2010 Olympic Committee where those extra funds were going to come from. “Some of those explanations we found,” Doyle told reporter Stephanie Levitz, “the best word would be, unconvincing.”
Chicago’s 2016 budget similarly fails to account for several true cost factors. A real estate collapse has already eaten $225 million into the insulation from Chicago taxpayers, and free sanitation, transportation, and medical services must be provided during the 2016 Summer Games, as a change in international rules now prohibit the city from charging for those services.
The Michael Reese Hospital purchase did come with stern warnings from the council that future Olympic hires must do better than the current 6% minority-owned businesses involved in the bid. (According to the Sun-Times, 5th Ward Alderperson Leslie Hairston castigated Ryan with the statement: “Everybody making decisions at Chicago 2016 — you all think alike. You don’t know any people of color. You can’t find any people of color. That is wrong. I’m telling you today there will be consequences. There will be actions taken if you all continue . . . excluding people of color in every aspect of 2016.”)
According to The Canadian Press however, the Vancouver 2010 committee already plans to deal with excesses in Olympic budgets by cutting back on new hires.
(An interesting historical accounting of the Olympic Games can be found here.)
Tags: Chicago, Chicago 2016, London 2012, Olympics, race, Vancouver 2010
