In an interview broadcast on my local NPR station this morning, Bryan Mann, who used to work at the station and has written extensively about issues in the north country, spoke about the latest state boondoggle. It seems the state has boosted the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) budget by hundreds of millions of dollars.
ORDA has responded to this cash infusion by spending much of it on venues which are not only likely to add to its revenue stream, but will require frequent and expensive maintenance. Ski jump gondolas and biathlon trails may indeed attract such events as the recent World University Games, but the costs for staging such events run into tens of millions of dollars and ticket sales were in the $700,000 range. Meanwhile, climate change may render the winter venues in Lake Placid obsolete in the near future. That shiny new bobsled track won't work very well in a January downpour.
Mann's reporting doesn't tell us who exactly benefits from the avalanche of cash from Albany, but it would be interesting to know why scarce resources are being spent on a winter slush fund!!
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