SLOC considers open policies
Posted: Wednesday March 03, 1999 01:04 PM
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A Salt Lake Organizing Committee panel has
drafted policies it said were intended to make the Olympics
organizers more open to public scrutiny, accountable and free of
conflicts of interest -- but with limits.
The committee discussed conflicts of interest at length, and
settled on the idea that SLOC trustees or management committee
members should resign if they or family members have a direct
economic interest in a company doing business with the SLOC or 5
percent or more ownership in a company doing business with the
organizing committee.
The group also discussed what financial entanglements trustees,
management committee members and the SLOC employees should be
required to disclose each year, but left it to staff to write the
specific rules.
Committee chairman Nolan Karras, the governor's stand-in on the
SLOC management committee, said he would not serve on the board if
he had to disclose his stock portfolio.
Karras said the policy drafts discussed by the panel Tuesday
will be published for public and SLOC board comment.
Gov. Mike Leavitt last month charged the committee with devising
policies to guide a more open and ethical Olympics organization in
the wake of the Olympic scandal.
Keith Christensen, a Salt Lake City council member appointed to
the SLOC board of trustees during its Feb. 11 reorganization,
pressed repeatedly for more openness in the policies suggested by
the SLOC attorneys.
"This community really owns the games," Christensen said.
"Our job is to craft fair, open and understandable policies. The
more open we can be, the better."
Brian Katz, a SLOC attorney, conceded that the committee in the
past did not comply with its own open-records policy. The staff
grew so fast, "people didn't even know the policy existed," Katz
said.
Attorney Kelly Flint warned the panel away from requiring
disclosure of sponsor and licensee agreements or even the names and
bid amounts of those vying for the SLOC contracts.
Such openness would have a chilling effect, he said, because
sponsors don't want other customers to know what discounts they
were willing to give to the Olympics.
The committee approved a list of 15 types of documents that
anyone in the public could readily get, but any deeper research
would cost $25 an hour.
Flint and Katz said SLOC will need to hire at least one more
staffer to do records research and delete confidential information
before letting documents out.
Christensen persuaded his colleagues to set up an appeals
process for times when the staffer decides a document should be
kept secret.
"We can't have a records czar making the final decision,"
Christensen said.
He also successfully argued that the SLOC should tell those
seeking documents whether the search will take longer than 30 days.
The committee endorsed a policy requiring board of trustee and
management committee members to attend 75 percent of all meetings
within any 12-month span, and deleted an
"out-of-town-on-business" excuse for not attending.
The committee also supported having SLOC post its meeting
minutes, agendas and other material on its Internet Web site.
Stephen Pace, a longtime opponent of Salt Lake hosting the
Olympics, attended the meeting and was dubious that the policies
will pry SLOC open. "This is a meeting about closing records," he
said.
In a related development, the Utah House on Tuesday approved and
sent to the governor a measure to give the Legislature more
oversight over Olympic planning.
The bill establishes a legislative committee, made up of seven
members from the House and five from the Senate, to review SLOC's
quarterly financial reports to the governor.
The governor would have to provide a written report at least
twice a year explaining his rationale for approving or rejecting
the proposed budget
The bill was amended to state that the reports by the governor
and Olympic officer did not necessarily constitute a guarantee by
the state.
Another change to the original bill indicates that the state is
not responsible for any contract or debt incurred by the SLOC.
The Legislature also sent to the governor a bill that bans the
state's 20,000 holders of concealed-weapons permits from taking
their guns into 2002 Winter Olympic venues. Leavitt plans to sign
the measure, which also would allow homeowners and church leaders
to forbid guns in their homes and buildings.
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