Ethics committee to review Salt Lake budget
Posted: Wednesday December 16, 1998 11:59 AM
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Salt Lake City's Olympic organizing committee is headed by Frank Joklik AP |
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (AP) -- Trying to clear its image after
allegations of bribery, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee's ethics
panel plans to scour eight years of documents to find out how
nearly $13 million was spent.
The chairman of the panel, retired Utah Supreme Court Chief
Justice Gordon R. Hall, says investigators will have to rely on
SLOC for information and that the panel has no power to penalize.
"We are not a fact-finding body. We don't do investigations,"
Hall said. "As far as doing things like removing (SLOC trustees),
we don't have any such authority."
SLOC spokeswoman Shelley Thomas said the five members of the
panel were to be contacted Wednesday, and the organizing committee
is scheduled to meet Friday to initiate the investigation.
Thomas could not promise the panel's findings will be made
public, but government leaders and a head of an anti-Olympic group
are warning that anything less won't do.
"The Utah Games effort has been grievously damaged and the
public confidence greatly eroded by the developing bribery
scandal," said Stephen Pace, chairman of Utahns for Responsible
Public Spending, an anti-Olympics group.
Full disclosure of the bid committee's finance is the only way
to restore that confidence, Pace said in a letter on Tuesday.
Salt Lake's bid was funded with private money, and Olympic
officials have refused to open its financial books.
But recent revelations that the bid committee, under the
direction of former president Thomas Welch, spent nearly $400,000 on 13 scholarships - including six for relatives of
International Olympic Committee members - and the resulting outcry
from government leaders could force SLOC's hand.
Adding to SLOC's problems are revelations that Welch solicited
$28,000 in free medical services, including plastic surgery,
from Intermountain Health Care, which was recently named the 2002
Winter Games' primary medical provider.
Governor Mike Leavitt called for the ethics investigation on Monday
and has been joined by leaders of Utah's Legislature.
House Minority Leader David Jones said Tuesday he will introduce
a bill when the Legislature convenes in January requiring SLOC to
itemize past and future expenditures.
"Utah taxpayers have a great investment in the 2002 Games and
they deserve to know that public revenue is being properly spent,"
he said. Nearly $60 million in taxpayer money went to build
venues for the Games.
Several former Salt Lake Bid Committee board members said they
didn't know about the payments to relatives of the IOC members,
although they knew they were being vigorously courted.
"I always facetiously say I'd rather be an IOC delegate than
king," said Fred Ball, a member of the bid committee since its
inception. "We took very good care of them."
"I don't think anybody would have expected us to have them in
Motel 6 and take them to Hardees at night," said Ball, but he
added that he believed all the wooing was done within existing
rules, which limit the value of gifts to IOC members to $150.
"As far as I knew, we were playing the game, but playing the
game within the rules," said Henry Marsh, a member of the SLOC's
board of trustees and a four-time Olympic steeplechaser.
The IOC has begun its own investigation of the Salt Lake bribery
allegations.
Salt Lake City Council member Joanne Milner questioned why Mayor
Deedee Corradini didn't know about the bid committee's actions.
"She's supposed to be asking these tough questions as our
representative," said Milner, who is looking into what the city
can do to require full SLOC disclosure.
"I know SLOC will conduct an investigation. But good grief, how
impartial can that be? What a conflict of interest," she said.
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