USOC drops Boston as Olympic host city
The U.S. Olympic Committee and Boston 2024 are dropping Boston as the nation's potential host city for the 2024 Summer Olympics, ending a months-long debate over what Gov. Charlie Baker called a "ten-year drill" with major economic and fiscal ramifications.
Word of the decision began circulating mid-afternoon Monday, after Boston Mayor Martin Walsh said he had declined to sign a host city agreement, and Baker confirmed the decision during a State House press conference just after 3 p.m.
In a statement, the U.S. Olympic Committee said Walsh's comments on Monday were a consideration in its decision as well as the inability to convince a majority of people locally to support the Boston bid.
In January, on the same day Baker took office, the commitee chose Boston as the nation's host city, surprising many locally and leading to the expectation that plans for the games would become more detailed in the ensuing months.
"I strongly believe that bringing the Olympic Games back to the United States would be good for our country and would have brought long-term benefits to Boston. However, no benefit is so great that it is worth handing over the financial future of our city, and our citizens were rightly hesitant to be supportive as a result," Walsh said in a statement. "We always anticipated having the time to do our due diligence on the guarantees required and a full review of the risk and mitigation package proposed last week. This is a monumental decision that cannot be rushed, even if it means not moving forward with our bid for 2024 Summer Games."
Boston 2024, the group leading the charge to host the Olympics, was the target of criticism during the process both from skeptics of a Boston Olympics and others who complained the group's plans lacked detail or were too often kept secret. Steve Pagliuca, a co-owner of the Boston Celtics and former U.S. Senate candidate, has led Boston 2024's recent efforts after taking over for John Fish.
Public opinion polling has consistently shown low levels of support for a Boston Olympics and many elected officials in Massachusetts have opted against coming out strongly in favor of a Boston Olympics, saying repeatedly that they hoped to safeguard tax dollars.
Ballot question leaders elated
Leaders of a planned ballot question banning the use of public funds on the Olympics started celebrating Monday afternoon.
"The many elected officials in Boston 2024's corner looked the other way for months, even when it became clear that Boston 2024 had been less than truthful about what it wanted from taxpayers," Evan Falchuk, a 2014 candidate for governor, said in a statement. "If Boston 2024 could have produced a plan that did not rely on a taxpayer bailout, they would be still in the running for the 2024 games."
"This is good day for Massachusetts taxpayers," added Rep. Shaunna O'Connell of Taunton. "The Boston Games would have resulted in a multi-billion taxpayer funded bailout. It would have hurt our state's bond rating, taken tax dollars from necessities and forced huge tax increases. We are a world-class state without the Olympics. We don't need to spend billions of tax dollars to prove that fact."
No Boston Olympics announced plans for a celebration Monday night at The Beantown Pub.
"Boston is a world-class city. We are a city with an important past and a bright future. We got that way by thinking big, but also thinking smart. We need to move forward as a city, and today's decision allows us to do that on our own terms, not the terms of the USOC or the IOC. We're better off for having passed on Boston 2024," No Boston Olympics said in a statement.
State officials hired an independent consultant to review the bid, and The Brattle Group's report is due in mid-August.
Gov. Baker said Monday that he still looked forward to the consultant's report and called the decision to drop the bid "their call."
"We would like to see the U.S. properly represented in this whole thing," Baker said during a televised press conference outside Senate President Stanley Rosenberg's office with Rosenberg, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito.
DeLeo said the process showed that people looked at Boston as a "world-class city," capable of hosting the Olympics and said the discussions about hosting the Olympics fed thinking about improving operations in Massachusetts and were "valuable."
Rosenberg said he was "very excited" that Massachusetts was the initial choice but wondered about issues that would "make it real," including the level of support for a Boston Olympics from the federal government.
DeLeo said he had not spoken with the U.S. Olympic Committee and Baker said he hadn't felt pressured.
"I don't feel like I was strong-armed or bullied at all," Baker said, asserting state officials had stuck to their timetable for reviewing the bid and that it hadn't synced up with the committee's timeline.
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