Rio mayor: It's not true that Rio is broken

RIO DE JANEIRO — Mayor Eduardo Paes sought to rally confidence in the city's ability to smoothly carry out the Olympic Games less than 50 days away after the state government of his ally Francisco Dornelles declared "public calamity" over the state's finances last week in order to ease up additional funds for Olympic works.

The governor wrote in his declaration that authorities would need to take "exceptional measures" in order to "honor its commitments to carry out the Olympic Games" and that "any institutional instability could mean a risk to the image of the country that would be difficult to recuperate."

The measure will allow the state of Rio to seek an additional $90 million from the federal government this year even as the state's projected deficit is already estimated to reach $5.5 billion. Chief amongst the state's concerns are finishing the metro line that will link the touristic Ipanema beachside neighborhood with the western region of Barra, where the majority of Olympic events will take place.

Paes admitted that there are contingency plans involving the metro, now expected to be completed only days before the Aug. 5 Olympic opening ceremony.  But he said such plans would not be as "adequate" nor as "comfortable" as an underground metro line. The local press has reported that the city will declare more holidays to free up roads and open special bus lanes to take spectators to the events.

"It's not true that Rio is broken," Mayor Paes said, making a distinction between the financial woes of the state government and his.

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Paes added that municipal employees are being paid normally and on time and that the city's level of indebtedness is well within parameters established by legislation on fiscal responsibility. “We want to make sure it's clear for the Brazilian press and the international press that it's not because of the Olympics that Rio is in this situation."

To that point Paes said that 94 percent of the Olympic projects were the responsibility of the city government and that nearly all of those were completed, commenting on fine details like the small tiles to be put on venues to be finished.

Paes emphasized the high volume of private funds utilized to finance infrastructure projects for the Games, saying that 60 percent of funds for projects carried out exclusively for the Olympics came from private sources.

“Some are ideologically against this, but we aren't,” he said.

He also rebutted the common criticism that Rio spent on arenas and projects of questionable utility to the public while basic services like public health care and schools are left wanting. "What we spent on making stadiums is one percent of what the city of Rio de Janeiro spent on public healthcare and education" during the years leading up to the Games, he said.

Public services like health care and schools are provided by both the city and state governments of Rio de Janeiro. Teachers employed by the state in Rio de Janeiro have been on strike for months and several universities have suspended classes.

As Rio and the whole country is facing a deep economic recession in which Brazilians have lost their jobs and those who are employed are often going unpaid, enthusiasm for hosting the Games — Rio's third mega-sporting event in less than 10 years, following the 2007 Pan American Games and 2014 World Cup — is hard to come by.

The resources from the federal government obtained through the declaration of public calamity should "prioritize attending public servants, subcontractors, and pensioners whose salaries are going unpaid," said Renato Cosentino, a researcher affiliated with the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a member of a monitoring and activist group that tracks expenditures on mega-event projects. "It's already been published by the state government that these financial resources will be directed toward the Olympics, or, yet again, citizens are not a priority."

Cosentino also said the city government inflates the proportion of funds that come from private sources by including projects that have little relation to the Olympics, such as the upgrade of the city's Port Zone, and through the concession of public lands to construction companies.

On Tuesday Paes also confirmed that he planned to spend time at a U.S. university after the Games when he was questioned by a reporter about rumors that he had been offered a teaching position at Columbia University in New York.