All's Not Tranquail At Placid

It has come to be a fundamental fact of pre-Olympic life that organizing committees inevitably find themselves in trouble. This axiom applies to Winter as well as to Summer Games, so it is no shock to find there are troubles aplenty in Lake Placid . For the past several months the little upstate New York community, the site of next February's Winter Olympics, has been beset with rumors of bungling and high jinks, even higher living and corruption.

A sampling of newspaper headlines indicates just a few of the problems: SUSPICIONS CLOUD LAKE PLACID, OLYMPIC PIPE CONTRACT PROBED, MAILING PERMIT REVOKED. There also has been speculation that the Games couldn't—and wouldn't—be held because the Lake Placid Olympic Organizing Committee is skating on financially thin ice. And there have been stories, notably from the Ottaway News Service—part of a Dow Jones subsidiary that serves 19 newspapers—concerning questionable bidding practices, cost overruns, a $6.6 million lawsuit filed by two direct-mail fund raisers alleging breach of contract and fraud by the LPOOC, and a suspect $800,000 insurance contract awarded without bidding to two nephews of one John M. Wilkins, who also happens to be a member of the Lake Placid Olympic executive committee and the chairman of its broadcast and marketing division.

All of the stories, and all the talk they generated, prompted U.S. authorities, who had shoveled $56 million into the Games, to announce that they would investigate the matter. But what they have done is add to the confusion. Last November, Harold Williams, deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Commerce, announced that his Economic Development Administration would look into possible criminal violations at Lake Placid . Several weeks ago Williams said that the EDA had concluded its investigation and that no criminal charges were likely to result. No sooner had Williams spoken than the Ottaway News Service released an internal memo, written by Guy W. Chamberlin Jr., the acting Inspector General at Commerce, in which he demanded an immediate "general across-the-board investigation" of "allegations of substantial irregularities" at Lake Placid .

With all this, it is time to put Lake Placid in perspective, which is fitting because the slogan of the local organizers in happier days was "The Olympics in Perspective."

?The games are going to be held. Action starts Feb. 13, 1980. Count on it.

?Yes, there is a cash-flow shortage for both construction ($17 million, including $2 million in overruns) and administration (take your pick of $4 million or $9 million).

?But according to Petr Spurney, the new $100,000-a-year hot-shot general manager for the LPOOC, "We have money on hand for all workers on jobs now. Construction is no crisis."

?The entire production—athletes, medals, bunting and all—will cost roughly $150 million, about half of it federal money. This is some $50 million over original estimates.

The troubles are largely self-inflicted. In fact, the Lake Placid saga is a sort of Norman Lear television series on skis, a classic tale of a small town anywhere. Lake Placid is a village of 3,000 nestled in the Adirondack Mountains , where everybody knows everybody else and/or is related (shades of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman). Everybody talks. Telling it like it is, everybody blabs. "Anything I say in an executive committee meeting is known to the public in an hour," says Spurney, who regards leaks as an occupational hazard.

Scratching out a living in this federally designated depressed area isn't easy, and not everyone was (or is) for the 1980 Olympics. The 1932 Winter Games, which were held in Lake Placid , failed to pay off in lasting tourism or business, leaving the little town about as broke as ever, and nowadays many villagers get livid when they hear how much money some of the folks who work for the LPOOC are making. Publication of a confidential list of salaries in the Adirondack Enterprise caused an uproar. "One time these people were dedicated to promoting the Olympics heart and soul," says Matt Clark, the town clerk of North Elba, the most popular politician around (12 straight wins) and an Olympic critic. "Now there's money, and they want to be paid."