Made out your holiday greeting card list yet? If you're a Florida taxpayer, don't forget the members of the U.S. Olympic Committee. Thank them profusely for eliminating Tampa after the trial heat of American cities preening to host the 2012 Summer Games.
Florida 2012's finish in October was rather pathetic. But look on the bright side.
By failing to make even the first cut, Florida 2012 saved state and local taxpayers at least $132-million. That public money would have been diverted from the Sunshine State's feeble attempts to educate kids and protect the environment to a self-congratulatory corporate schmooze fest, with a few athletes making cameo appearances.
Republican U.S. Sen. Robert F. Bennett recently asked the U.S. General Accounting Office for a historical look at who foots the bill when the Olympics visit our shores.
As the junior senator from Utah, Bennett has more than a pedestrian interest. Salt Lake City is the site of the 2002 Winter Games.
The GAO came back with the revelation that, while the cost of hosting the Olympics in America has been shooting up like a ski jumper since 1980, the federal share of the expense has been falling.
In the same equation, the portion underwritten by state and local taxpayers has risen steadily. New York taxpayers picked up 2.7 percent of the $2.3-billion direct cost of the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid. Utah taxpayers are absorbing 5.8 percent of their more expensive $3.9-billion games.
That is $226-million from Utah taxpayers, in round numbers. The GAO didn't include an estimated $50-million that must be spent on extra security against terrorist attacks.
The average combined local and state financing of the Lake Placid and Salt Lake City games and the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta pencils out to $174-million in inflation-adjusted 2001 dollars.
Los Angeles voters had the good sense to pass a 1978 city charter amendment prohibiting the expenditure of any of their tax money on the Olympics unless somebody guaranteed that the local government would be reimbursed.
Guess what? The city and county of L.A., along with the state of California, spent a "minimal" amount on the 1984 Summer Games, according to the GAO. Of course, Florida 2012 President Ed Turanchik initially promised that no public money would be spent on Tampa's bid. That was after $150,000 from a Hills- borough County tourist tax fund already had gone out the window for a nonrefundable USOC bid fee.
But not before Turanchik invited public agencies to make a "contribution" to Florida 2012's Olympic bid.
And not before state lawmakers and Gov. Jeb Bush stepped up to backstop the USOC with a $175-million tax-funded guarantee against losses from a Florida summer games.
Before he had to turn off the lights this fall, Turanchik projected the Tampa games would cost $2.5-billion to put on. Oh, yeah? The GAO said it cost $4.4-billion for the Atlanta games five years ago.
Using Atlanta's expense ratios, that means Florida taxpayers would have been tapped for a minimum of $132-million for the Tampa games, based on Turanchik's very optimistic projections. (The Florida 2012 visionary predicted the Tampa games would be profitable, thus his refusal to entertain the possibility that the $175-million state guarantee against losses would be called by the USOC.)
Whew! $132-million!
To the USOC, cheers from Tampa. May your fondest holiday wish come true — suckering some other city into sending a couple hundred million tax dollars up in smoke with an Olympic torch.
Contact Staff Writer Francis X. Gilpin at 813-248-8888, ext. 130, or frangilpin@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2001.