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SI: Games to cost taxpayers $1.5 billion Posted: Wednesday December 05, 2001 11:32 AMATLANTA (CNN/SI) -- The Salt Lake Olympics will cost federal taxpayers an unprecedented $1.5 billion, Sports Illustrated reports in its Dec. 10 edition. The magazine says the total is more than the combined federal spending on the previous seven Olympics held in the United States. The total includes all federal funding in any way attached to the Olympics, part of it for highway and light-rail construction. Salt Lake Organizing Committee president Mitt Romney disputed the figure. "If someone wants to count the completion of a highway project in Utah as an Olympic project ... well, yeah, you can get federal dollars to be huge," Romney told the magazine. A General Accounting Office report issued Nov. 26 pegged the cost to taxpayers at $342 million, a figure that doesn't include an estimated $50 million for additional security following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Sports Illustrated says Federal spending for the games will average $625,000 for each of the 2,400 athletes, a 996 percent increase from the $57,000 per athlete spent in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games.
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