Salt Lake 2002: Snow job

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The IRE Journal, Mar/Apr 2002 by Barlett, Donald L, Steele, James B

Winter Olympic goodies courtesy of Uncle Sam

In years past, prospectors looking for precious metals sank shafts all over the Wasatch Mountains outside Salt Lake City. The mines are closed now, but Utahans haven't given up the hunt. They just moved operations a little further east, to a place called Washington, D.C., where finding gold turned out to be a lot easier than it ever was back in Utah.

Welcome to the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, sponsored in part by you - and all other American taxpayers. As we discovered in an investigation for Sports Illustrated, Utah officials have been remarkably successful in prying money out of Washington to pay for anything even remotely connected to this year's games in Salt Lake.

The tab, we ultimately concluded, is $1.5 billion thus far, making the Salt Lake games the most expensive ever for federal taxpayers - two and one-half times more costly than the 1996 summer games in Atlanta, which had three times the events.

In fact, more federal money is being spent on the Salt Lake games than on all seven Olympic games held in the U.S. since 1904 - combined - in inflation-adjusted dollars. It works out to an average of $625,000 per athlete, though of course none of this money actually goes to the athletes. Instead, the beneficiaries are an assortment of local businessmen, resort owners and developers. Millionaires all.

The story originated more than a year ago when SI editors came across a General Accounting Office (GAO) audit indicating that the federal share of U.S.-sponsored Olympic games was soaring and approached us about the possibility of taking an in-depth look. In many ways it was a logical story for us - much in the spirit of our 1998 corporate welfare series for Time and very much in SI's tradition of tackling controversial subjects.

To get the story meant employing techniques all reporters use on any long-term project: interviews; tips; field trips; reams of statistics; historical records; and government documents. In the end, "Snow Job" was a classic public records story - pieced together from the records of dozens of federal, state and local agencies.

The numbers

Breaking down the overall cost of the games to federal taxpayers was the single most challenging task. There is no one source for the amount Washington has shipped to Utah. Some data is included in GAO audits. Other statistics came from Utah's Olympic Officer. Still more data was provided by individual federal and state agencies after phone calls, letters or FOI requests.

All along we met resistance, notably from federal agencies. The Department of Transportation and U.S. Forest Service proved especially difficult; a Transportation Department official initially told us there was no way to provide the figures that we requested. But persistence paid off and DOT eventually acknowledged that, yes, they did have the numbers, and then, albeit reluctantly, provided them.

Another obstacle arose when agencies supplied different numbers for the cost of the same project. The federally funded temporary Olympic parking lots are a case in point.

Millions of dollars were poured into open fields near Park City to build two 80-acre lots that will be used for about one month by those who are lucky enough to be able to afford tickets to events in nearby Park City and Olympic Park. Then, courtesy of federal taxpayers, the lots will be torn up and the land restored to its previous state.

The GAO put the cost of the lots and other "spectator transportation" items at $77 million. Utah's Olympic officer says the U.S. contributed $31 million for the lots. The Utah Department of Transportation, which built the lots, put the federal share at $23 million, though the final total won't be known until after the games. When conflicts like this arose we invariably used the lower number. We try to be conservative in using numbers; if you don't overreach, it usually means less trouble down the road and it doesn't take away from your point.

Historical record

We have long found that readers like to see a story placed in context. In many projects, examining the historical record may not only turn up evidence to buttress the key points of a story, but also provides fresh insights and documents disparate treatment and that old standby institutional hypocrisy. So it was in this case where a review of previous Olympics held in the United States - particularly the Summer Games in Atlanta (1996) and Los Angeles (1984), and the Winter Games in Lake Placid (1932 and 1980) - proved especially valuable.

For example, statistics on federal spending in Los Angeles allowed us to place comparable Salt Lake spending in context. On a per-athlete basis, federal outlays rose from $11,000 to $625,000. That would translate into a current minimum wage of $190 an hour, a more meaningful number for the average reader than $1.5 billion.

Also, in poring through the archives of the 1980 Games at Lake Placid, we found the bankruptcy papers that the Lake Placid Olympic Committee had prepared - but never filed. The Games ended with a $6 million deficit and the Carter Administration had refused even a modest bailout of $3 million. New York state eventually came to the rescue, eliminating the need for bankruptcy. (Should the Salt Lake Games end with a deficit, this could make for a fascinating contrast).