A Utah Winter Olympics would broaden the state's economic base and support education needs, pro-Olympic forces said, but using state sales tax to invest in the Games is unethical and tantamount to gambling, anti-Olympic forces said Thursday.
With the Nov. 7 non-binding Olympic referendum less than two weeks away, groups on both sides of the issue continue to take their message to the public.Olympics for Utah Inc., a pro-Olympic group, and Utahns for Responsible Public Spending, opposed to the Games, debated in Utah House of Representatives chambers Thursday before the Women's State Legislative Council.
Salt Lake City Council member Sydney Fonnesbeck, saying she has been "nagging the Olympics committee that women should be more involved," urged legislative council members to vote "yes" in November.
"Four years ago I was opposed to the Olympics; and I was so because I considered myself very much an environmentalist . . . . I am now firmly in favor of the Olympics," she said.
With Olympic venues restricted from the Big and Little Cottonwood canyons - the core of Salt Lake's watershed - and after thorough study of other environmental effects, Fonnesbeck said environmental concerns have nearly been eliminated.
Further, Fonnesbeck said Utah "is quietly becoming the low-wage capital of the United States," a reflection of the state's struggling economy, a struggle that could be aided by the Olympics.
Organizers hope to build facilities with the $56 million amassed by diverting 1/32 cent sales tax. Fonnesbeck said this is a reasonable investment to make in improving the state's economy.
"It's not education money, it is money that would go throughout the state to be used for infrastructure," she added.
But Steve Pace, a member of the anti-Olympic group Utahns for Responsible Public Spending, likened Fonnesbeck's enthusiasm to a new disease sweeping the Beehive State: Olympic Fever.
The fever's symptoms include "suspension of critical thought," "Pinocchiosis" and "an irrepressible urge to gamble with the public sector's money," Pace said.
Pace said use of $56 million in public money to build a bobsled-luge run, speed-skating rink and ski-jump won't serve the public good as asserted by Olympic supporters.
Instead, the facilities would "be used at most by a couple of thousand people in the world," he said, describing the Olympics as a "black hole that eats public money."
John Hawkins, founding member of Utahns for Responsible Public Spending, told the legislative council that using sales tax dollars is tampering with the most sensitive form of tax revenue in the state.
"Why is the sales tax so sensitive? Everyone pays into it and everyone should benefit from it in the broadest possible way," he said.
Instead, organizers plan to use the money to benefit a small sector of the state economy, a sector composed of the tourism and ski industries.
"The people who will profit will be the developers and the ski industry," Hawkins said.
"We are being asked to gamble," Hawkins concluded, likening the Olympics to a giant slot machine and saying he doesn't necessarily object to the practice.
"But I do object to having to be asked to front that bet. We can pull the lever, but if that slot machine pays off, we may only get a quarter back."