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Protesters carry signs at an Olympics protest outside of Chicago City Hall on Sept. 29.
Public information on Olympics process scarce
Media in previous host cities fought for information
UPDATE: Chicago did not win its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The International Olympic Committee chose Rio de Janeiro as the Olympic host city on Friday morning. Chicago began its quest to become the Olympic host city in 2005, and for four years the event’s potential costs, benefits and consequences were hotly debated. Check out a photo gallery of reaction to the news at Daley Plaza and more photos from the Tuesday night protest on the Freedom Project’s Flickr page, http://www.flickr.com/photos/freedomphotosThis story was posted to McCormick Freedom Project’s Fanning the Flames blog before the vote was taken.
By Jamie Loo, First Amendment reporter
October 1, 2009
While supporters of a 2016 Olympics in Chicago are on a media blitz before Friday’s
International Olympic Committee vote, they will likely be more camera-shy with planning
information if the city wins the bid.
The Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) won’t apply to the city’s organizing
committee if Chicago gets the Olympics, but an ordinance passed by the city council
provides a few safeguards to open public records.
The organizing committee has agreed to provide the city council’s Budget and
Government Operations, and Finance committees with quarterly financial reports.
The reports will include information such as revenues, expenses, construction
costs, financial forecasts, insurance, and copies of financial reports submitted
to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and state. Information such as requests
for proposals, final construction contracts and amounts, and information on whether
contractors donated anything to the organizing committee would also be disclosed.
These reports will be posted on a quarterly basis to their Web site. A copy of the
conflict of interest policy and required forms from the board of directors and other
senior officers will be also posted on the organizing committee’s Web site.
No Games Chicago organizer, Tom Tresser, said he doesn’t have much faith in the
ordinance’s openness commitment. No Games Chicago is a grassroots group of local
residents who oppose the city’s Olympic bid, and also has a presence in Copenhagen
this week. Tresser, a local activist co-founder of Protect Our Parks which sued the
city to prevent it from privatizing portions of Lincoln Park, said their Freedom of
Information Act requests were regularly ignored by the city.
“The city flouts the (FOIA) law routinely,” he said.
If Chicago is chosen, Tresser said he doubts that local media organizations will
fight for open records because he feels they didn’t do a good job covering the bid
process. He said many of the media organizations also have a conflict of interest
because they donated money to support the Olympic bid. According to the Chicago
2016 Stewardship report, Tribune owner Sam Zell, the Sun-Times, ABC 7, WGN, WTTW,
Chicago magazine and other media organizations donated or provided pro bono support.
Tresser said information that is available, such as a report by the non-partisan Civic
Federation on the impact of the Olympics, is filled with conflict of interest issues.
Companies and organizations that funded the report have either donated to the bid or
stand to gain financially from a local Olympics, he said.
Pushing the local organizing committee or the International Olympic Committee to
follow state FOIA laws is futile, Tresser said, because the committee will likely
ignore it.
“The IOC is above all law. You can’t make the IOC and its creatures obey American
law,” he said.
The press office for the Chicago 2016 bid committee did not respond to questions
from Fanning the Flames for this story.
Fanning the Flames is a blog of the McCormick Freedom Museum, which is part of the
McCormick Foundation. The McCormick Foundation donated money to the 2016 Fund for
Chicago Neighborhoods, which awards grants to local organizations for local planning
and development activities to complement the city’s Olympic bid. A specialized
reporting institute in partnership with DePaul University was sponsored by the
McCormick Foundation to help the media cover the Olympics if Chicago wins the
bid. The foundation was also one of the contributors to the Civic Federation of
Chicago study, which was released in late August. The non-partisan organization
conducted an independent financial review of Chicago’s bid for the Chicago City
Council.
Lack of transparency
Organizing committees in previous host cities have claimed to be private entities,
exempting them from state freedom of information and open meetings laws. It’s a
barrier that local media organizations had to overcome in Atlanta, Georgia and in
Salt Lake City, Utah to cover Olympic development news, and later to uncover
questionable practices their cities used to become host cities.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution managing editor, Bert Roughton, who was a reporter
for the newspaper during the 1996 Atlanta games, said most of the records they
needed were available during the bidding process, because much of that process
involved approval from local and state government.
But after Atlanta won the host city bid, he said the organizing committee began
claiming its private status and tried to keep records closed. Roughton said he
remembers several weeks of back and forth discussions with Olympic organizers trying
to get them to be more open with information. When the newspaper asked for salary
figures, organizers took it as “aggressive act.” Roughton said many committee
members were not public figures and unaccustomed to dealing with the press, so it
took them a while to come around and understand what reporters were trying to do.
Roughton said the Metropolitan Atlanta Olympic Games Authority (MAOGA) was created
as a public entity, which meant its records were subject to the state’s freedom of
information law. One of MAOGA’s tasks was building Olympic venues, he said, so
documents such as construction contracts were public information. The London 2012
Olympic Committee has set up a similar public entity called the Olympic Delivery
Authority.
The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG), eventually released some records
to avoid going to court, Roughton said, and agreed to make regular reports to the
media on their work. He said the newspaper’s experience turned out OK overall and
they were able to gain access to the top salaries of those involved with the games,
budgets and other important information for the public.
At the time, Roughton said the IOC probably wasn’t accustomed to dealing with
journalists armed with legal protection under FOIA laws looking for information.
Roughton speculated that the IOC probably doesn’t have to deal with the same level
of scrutiny as they do in the U.S., because other countries have less press freedoms.
“They (IOC) were fairly uncomfortable working here,” Roughton said.
That discomfort would only grow later when a scandal in the bidding process for the
2002 Winter Olympic Games was discovered.
Scandal in Salt Lake City
A letter from Salt Lake City Organizing Committee (SLOC) official David Johnson
stating that money from the “scholarship program” would be ending for Sonia Essomba
surfaced in the media in November of 1998. Essomba, a student at American University
at the time, was the daughter of an International Olympic Committee member which
voted to award the games to Salt Lake City in 1995. As the story unfolded, it was
discovered that Essomba had received $108,350 in college tuition, rent and expenses
from the SLOC. It was part of more than $1 million in improper gifts and cash
presented to 24 of 114 IOC members, in an effort to secure Salt Lake City as the
Olympic host city.
The American Journalism Review reported that the story triggered an investigation
into the “biggest corruption scandal in the history of the Olympics” and led to
investigations into the bidding practices of previous Olympic game host cities.
After the scandal broke, state legislators in Utah demanded that SLOC open their
meetings and records to the public, according to archives from The Salt Lake Tribune.
The Salt Lake Tribune regularly reported on the open records issues the newspaper,
along with other media organizations and the public faced during the lead up to the
Olympics.
By the end of March 1999 the SLOC agreed to voluntarily release documents and work
on drafting an open records policy. Salt Lake City media organizations felt that
the initial open records policy draft didn’t go far enough and still denied access
to many meetings and records. Mike O’Brien, attorney for the Salt Lake Tribune,
sent a letter to the SLOC policy committee asking them to close loopholes in the
policy. O’Brien and other media attorneys argued that because Salt Lake City
signed an agreement to cover the SLOC’s debts and borrowed $59 million in state
funds to build Olympic venues, the organization should be open to more public
scrutiny.
After four months of discussions, SLOC adopted an open records policy agreeing to
some demands from the media and withholding other information. The committee agreed
to a “presumption of openness” for audit, compensation and ethics committee meetings.
But the public can be shut out of those meetings at any time because of personnel
issues, contracts or other business that may arise, and are eligible to go behind
closed doors under Utah’s open meeting laws.
The committee adopted clear language to limit the reasons for closing meetings on
legal matters. Non-business and social meetings of board members would not require
public notice, but any SLOC business at these events was prohibited. The SLOC
created a reading room for the public with information including a list of
contracts, summaries of business terms in television rights contracts, and a
list of donors who contributed more than $10,000.
The SLOC limited its $1.45 billion budget to a four-page summary because of concerns
it would hurt the committee’s ability to negotiate with potential suppliers. The
salary figures for SLOC officers and the five highest paid employees were released,
but not for lower level managers and employees. SLOC agreed to a 20 day time frame
to respond to requests for information.
Months later, the SLOC hired a paralegal to help them respond to information requests
from the media and agreed to release some documents which were not covered in the
open records policy. Then in May 2000, the SLOC refused to release documents with
scandal-related legal payments, and a list of favors that may motivate IOC members
to vote for Salt Lake City, which was known as the geld document. Some committee
members feared releasing the documents would interfere with the U.S. Department of
Justice investigation into the bribery scandal.
After the Justice Department informed the committee that it was not the target of
their investigation, SLOC president Mitt Romney agreed to open all bid-era documents
with some exceptions. Romney allowed documents which may contain information related
to the indictment of former SLOC officials Tom Welch and Dave Johnson to be closed,
the Salt Lake Tribune reported. IOC members threatened to sue the Salt Lake
committee for libel for releasing the geld document. Romney responded that the
open records policy mandated its release. The media would try to get the document
from other sources, he said, and if the SLOC refused requests it would be viewed
as a cover up.
The Salt Lake City scandal sparked interest at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution to
look back at records from the 1996 Atlanta bid committee. The newspaper along with
the Georgia state attorney general’s office fought to have records released. U.S.
Congress opened up an investigation into potential corruption and also called for
Atlanta Olympic organizers to make records available.
In the summer of 1999, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games released an
index of 6,500 boxes of documents and processed records requests, according to
the Associated Press. Roughton said the public wanted more information over time
and that the Atlanta bid documents were regarded as “historical documents” by the
time they were released.
In an eight-part series published by Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the newspaper
found hundreds of gifts, job offers and personal favors involved in the bidding
process.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported that after the SLOC scandal, Nagano, Japan -- which
hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics--burned its documents related to the bidding process.
In a 1999 article that appeared in the Japanese newspaper, Asahi, vice secretary
general for the Nagano bid committee, Sumikazu Yamaguchi, confirmed that the
committee’s accounting books were destroyed in 1992. A 1999 investigation into
the Sydney, Australia committee’s bid for the 2000 summer Olympics uncovered
travel, entertainment and gifts that exceeded IOC rules. The Sydney Morning Herald
reported that independent auditor, Tom Sheridan, noted in his investigation report
that many bid-related documents had gone missing or were destroyed.
Did sunshine equal reform?
The International Olympic Committee has an ethics commission that investigates
alleged ethics violations by its members. In the wake of the Salt Lake City scandal
many IOC members resigned from the organizations, who were either connected to that
bid or other bids that were investigated by individual countries.
In 2002, U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) chief executive Lloyd Ward was accused of
trying to help a power company get a contract to supply generators to the Dominican
Republic for the 2003 Pan America Games. The power company had ties to Ward’s brother.
No contracts were signed and the USOC’s ethics oversight committee decided not to
discipline Ward.
The U.S. Senate’s committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held hearings
in January 2003 to investigate the controversy and other internal problems at the
USOC. The hearings led to a massive restructuring of the organization, which included
shrinking its board of directors from 125 to 11 people and clearly defining
responsibilities for directors and staff.
In addition to having an ethics officer, the USOC also created an Office of Compliance
to make sure all branches of the organization follow its code of conduct. The USOC
strengthened the code’s sections on conflict of interest and spelled out the rules
on gift giving. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and its application to the USOC,
was added to code. The act makes it a crime to directly or indirectly offer a bribe
to foreign officials or foreign government-owned corporations.
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British activists face records barriers for London 2012 Olympics
As Chicago vies for the 2016 Olympics, the 2012 Summer Olympics host city, London, is
preparing for its games and has a Freedom of Information policy in place. The London
Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) created the Olympic Delivery Authority
(ODA) as its public entity, which will handle infrastructure such as building Olympic
venues and transportation.
The LOCOG claims private status, but the ODA is subject to England’s Freedom of
Information Act 2000 law. The London 2012 Web site provides information on how to file
a request with the ODA and what categories of information are public.
The basic intent of England’s law is similar to FOIA laws in the U.S., except that it
includes a long list of vague exemptions. England’s law also allows public officials
to base a decision on whether the requestor is abusing their right to request information,
harassing or causing distress to officials, or whether the request lacks a serious purpose.
Despite the ODA’s policy, members of Games Monitor, a London Olympics watchdog group, say
they’ve been denied information requests on repeated occasions.
“Whenever I ask a FOI of the ODA(Olympic Delivery Authority) and it is a matter covered
by LOCOG the ODA simply tell me LOCOG is not obliged to answer,” said Julian Cheyne, a
member of Games Monitor, a London Olympics watchdog group.
Cheyne, an East London resident who was displaced to make way for the Olympics, said he and
other activists have been accused of making “vexatious requests.” Under England’s Freedom
of Information law, public officials can deny vexatious, or repeated requests if they’re
similar to prior requests. Cheyne said they have to be specific and word their requests
carefully otherwise officials will provide vague answers or claim they can’t answer because
of costs or time.
Independent journalist and Games Monitor member, Mike Wells, who has been writing about
radioactive waste that was unearthed at the London Olympic park site, said he has had
trouble obtaining records. In a Sept. 4 letter, ODA general counsel Celia Carlisle points
out factors that they “advise” Wells consider when he makes future requests and warns that
they may deny information if it “constitutes an abuse of the right to request information
or is otherwise manifestly unreasonable.” Carlisle notes that in filling freedom of
information requests, the ODA can take into account the history of a request, its context
to previous requests and consider “whether the request is likely to cause unjustified
distress, disruption or irritation.”
Games Monitor member and activist Charlie Charman said it generally takes government
officials 20 business days to respond, which is the maximum amount of time allowed under
the law. Officials then have a list of exemptions they can claim to refuse information
such as commercial confidentiality and “manifestly unreasonable” requests. He said officials
can also demand payment for the time it takes to process a request. If they deny your request,
Charman said an appeal can take another 20 days or longer.
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FTC: Bloggers must disclose freebies, payments for reviews.
The Federal Trade Commission took steps yesterday to make
product information and online reviews more accurate for
consumers, regulating blogging for the first time and mandating
that advertisers’ testimonials reflect typical results.(AP)
North American pro sports leagues in a twitter over tweeting. North America's professional sports leagues are all a
twitter over tweeting and have pushed through guidelines to ban
player access to social networking sites during games.(Reuters)
Op-ed: Tweeting of miscarriage a new low for social media.
Trunk tweeted while in a board meeting that she was having a
miscarriage — and how great is that? Beats the abortion she was
planning to have, which would have meant missing two days of
work since she would have had to go all the way to Chicago.(WP)
Anti-obesity ad shocks New Yorkers. A glass of thick, yellow
human fat, marbled with blood vessels, is the latest weapon in America's war on obesity.(BBC)
Jail terms for faith healing pair. A US
couple who prayed rather than seeking medical attention for
their dying daughter have been sentenced to six months in
jail.(BBC)
Strickland stops all executions until lethal injections
reviewed. Gov. Ted Strickland on Monday halted executions in Ohio until at least December to give the state
more time to review its system of lethal injection.(Cleveland
Plain Dealer)
Lodi defends its public prayers. City Council, one of
several threatened with suits, votes after hours of debate
to continue the practice.(LAT)
Court nixes case of fired deputy who ran vs. boss. Faced
with the prospect of an election challenge from one of his
deputies, Sheriff Paul Parsley of Bullitt County, Ky., fired him for trying "to take my job away
from me."(AP)
City of 8 Million Was a Ghost Town at the Polls.
According to preliminary returns, in fact, no votes were
recorded in scores of the city’s 6,100 election districts.(NYT)
30 years after gay march, activists head to DC. Organizers
of Sunday's National Equality March say that with President
Barack Obama encouraging gay activists to keep pressure on him
and Congress, it's time to make another show of visibility as
they did at marches in 1987, 1993 and 2000.(AP)
Op-ed: Songs of hate.
Buju Banton incites listeners to shoot gays in the
head, pour acid on us and set us on fire. Beenie Man suggests
that his fans ``Hang lesbians with a long piece of rope'' and
sings of a new
Jamaica, ``come to execute all the
gays.''(MH)
Entrepreneurs Build 'Butt Huts' as Solution to Montana Smoking
Ban. The two
are partnering to build metal smoking dugouts that can be placed
outside businesses so smokers have a place to puff without
violating the law and without exposing themselves to the
weather.(Fox News)
Hey, kids! Hate school? Don't tell Facebook!. The First
Amendment right to insult one's school increasingly
challenged.(MSNBC)
Md. university system devising policy on student displays of
porn films. Maryland's public university system is poised to
become the first in the country with a policy on student
displays of pornographic films, a direct response to legislative
demands made after a screening earlier this year of a XXX-rated
film at the University of Maryland, College Park.(BS)
Supreme Court declines Pledge of Allegiance case. A Florida high-schooler refused to stand and
repeat the Pledge of Allegiance, sparking a legal fight. An
appeals-court panel didn't rule his way, and now the Supreme
Court won't get involved. (CSM)
Palmerton students win T-shirt war. Bending to pressure from
the ACLU, Palmerton Area School District
officials have voided punishments meted out to high school
students who were kicked out of class last month for wearing T-
shirts that protested a new dress code.(Allentown Morning Call)
Bible verses banned from Ga. school football field.
The Warriors
of Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High took the field on Friday night
without any Bible verses written on the cheerleaders' banner.
Instead, the football team ran through a banner that read "This
is Big Red Country" before each bent on a knee to pray on the
field of Tommy Cash Stadium.(AP)
University of New Hampshire investigates newspaper thefts. University of New Hampshire
officials are investigating the theft of more than 4,000 copies
of the student newspaper last week.(SPLC)
UW-Oshkosh newspaper rejects anti-abortion ad.
The University
of Wisconsin-Oshkosh newspaper has rejected an anti-abortion
advertisement as too controversial.(AP)
Some justices suggest animal-cruelty law goes too far.
Supreme Court justices suggested Tuesday that a federal law
aimed at graphic videos of dogfights and other acts of animal
cruelty goes too far in limiting free-speech rights.(AP)
Gansler to argue for limits to Miranda before high court.
Seventeen years ago, before he was chief justice, John G.
Roberts Jr. argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that a
suspect's invocation of Miranda rights should have certain
limits. But he never got the chance to find out if the justices
agreed because the respondent in the case died, rendering it
moot.(BS)
Justices Decline to Hear Some 2,000 Cases.
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear appeals concerning
the Pledge of Allegiance, the Confederate flag and license
plates bearing the words “Choose Life.”(NYT)
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