Let’s take a moment to doff our hats to the International Olympic Committee, which has accomplished what no one in Chicago—not the press, the City Council, other politicians, or the voters—ever has: it’s made Mayor Daley tell the truth about city finances.
In retrospect, if Daley had been more honest up front, he might be better off today. Had he made the case to the public that spending two, three, maybe even five billion dollars on the Olympics would be a good investment, the public just might’ve bought in.
In other words, while Daley was publicly telling Chicagoans one thing, he was privately assuring Olympic officials of something else.
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What followed was like an earlier version of the recent parking meter debacle, as Daley hastily prepared the City Council to pass the funding legislation he needed to appease the USOC. Days after Ctvrtlik made his skin-in-the-game comment, Chicago 2016 chairman Patrick Ryan began meeting privately with groups of aldermen, who were irritated about being put on the spot. He met with them in small groups so as not to violate the state’s Open Meetings Act. He apologized for communication mistakes that had kept them in the dark and assured them that the pledge of public money would only be insurance in case the private money fell short.
Not everyone was persuaded. “It’s very hard to believe that no one in the city knew prior to the election that we were going to be required to put up $500 million,” Fourth Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle said during debate.
A month after the city council vote, the USOC chose Chicago over LA, and the IOC began weighing it against Madrid, Rio, and Tokyo.
Not surprisingly, the IOC turned him down—not once, but at least three times. Finally, on June 17 in Switzerland, IOC officials made it clear that he needed to put up or shut up.
