Keller @ Large: A Better Boston 2024 Olympics Plan

BOSTON (CBS) - "All we ask is the opportunity to have a constructive dialogue," said Boston 2024 CEO John Fish Tuesday after deciding to join critics of their Summer Olympics bid in calling for a statewide vote on the issue.

But there has already been plenty of dialogue.

The problem for Fish and company is that it hasn't been constructive, it's been a combination of a self-destructive monologue of secrecy, vagueness, and spin from the bid organizers, predictably resulting in an angry, dismissive response from critics and a general public in no mood for another round of Big Dig-style top-down elitism.

From the refusal to share any of the story they were selling to the U.S. Olympic Committee to the pep-rally the day after winning the U.S. bid at which questions about voter input were brushed off to the since-rescinded gag order on local Olympic criticism to the campaign-style payroll packing at Boston 2024 headquarters, the boosters have succeeded only in stoking everyone's worst fears while invoking our worst Big Dig memories.

But Tuesday's about-face might turn all that around.

The initiative petition plan defuses the claim that they're trying to ram this down our throats whether or not we want it.

They now have plenty of time to absorb public feedback, incorporate it into a concrete plan, marshal all available public support, and present it all to the large voter turnout drawn by the presidential election with the benefit of all that high-priced political expertise plus, I'm sure, an expensive ad campaign.

Like it or not, that's democracy.

What they were doing before wasn't.

Something tells me this is a much more marketable idea.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

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