Here’s the Key Part of Boston’s New Olympics Agreement
The removal of language prohibiting City of Boston employees from speaking out against a 2024 Olympic bid generated the most headlines when the city revealed its new agreement with the United States Olympic Committee earlier this week. But another element of the revised joinder agreement shows how the city is protecting itself from possible challenges to the bid.
Specifically, the city adjusted a part of the contract that said it would, along with Boston 2024, indemnify the USOC from any bid-related damages. Among the types of things those damages could arise from, the agreement says, is an “early termination’’ of the agreement. If that happened, if the bid was for some reason revoked, Boston 2024 would owe the USOC; you could think of it as a cancellation fee. The city, per the terms of the previous agreement, was on the hook to guarantee that payment—if Boston 2024 didn’t cover it, the city would be responsible.
This language, in Section 3.01 of the agreement, was in the original version, and it’s still there. (You can see both versions of the joinder embedded below.) But now it has a big caveat in the form of a new sentence: “Notwithstanding the foregoing, the City shall have no obligation of indemnity arising from a Bid Committee or OCOG [those terms refer to Boston 2024] failure of payment to the USOC…if and to the extent that such a payment was necessitated by a State or local law prohibiting the hosting of the 2024 Olympic Games in Boston.’’
In other words, if bidding for the Olympics is made illegal in some way or another, now the city doesn’t have to backstop Boston 2024’s damages to the USOC. It can wipe its hands clean.
The first way this can be read is as a nod to the prospect of a referendum on hosting the Olympics. That’s especially pertinent because of a new clause in a separate part of the contract that essentially serves as the city saying to the USOC: Look, guys, we can’t guarantee a referendum won’t happen. (More on that here.) There’s been a lot of talk about a referendum on the games. Four proposed non-binding ballot questions for Boston’s upcoming city election would ask whether residents would support hosting the games, whether they’d be okay with putting public money into them, whether the city should guarantee to cover any cost overruns, and whether eminent domain could be used to seize land for the Olympics. At the statewide level, where United Independent Party founder Evan Falchuk has taken early steps toward a ballot question, it’s less clear what exactly a binding question would address within the Olympic bidding framework.
But the new term in Section 3.01 also protects the city from any kind of legislative stop to the games. That’s pertinent, too, considering Massachusetts House legislation that already has more than 90 legislators signed on as supporters. The proposed bill (also embedded at the end of this article) would create a commission to, among other things: study the bid and the effects of the Olympics; require that all public and private Olympic-related spending be published online; and it would give final approval of the bid to the governor before its submission to the International Olympic Committee, if any state funds are included in it. So, if the governor were to say ‘no,’ the bid would be squashed, meaning it could be seen as a law “prohibiting the hosting of the 2024 Olympic Games in Boston.’’ Asked whether the city believes the revised joinder agreement protects it from that possibility, mayoral spokesperson Laura Oggeri said the “interpretation is correct.’’
You’d have to assume that if the bill became law, Boston 2024 would do everything it could to be in compliance with it, thus pre-empting the likelihood that the governor would 86 it. Even if that law or any other killed the bid, Boston 2024 has already indemnified the city from any costs associated with the bidding process, which will run through 2017, complete with a $25 million insurance policy. Working that into its agreement with the USOC is valuable for the city, of course, but it’s not a change in course.
However, the new provision shows how the city is moving to protect itself as the bidding process—and any challenges to it—advance. And it shows that the city sees those potential challenges as worthy of protection.
The new joinder agreement:
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The original:
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The proposed House bill:
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