Morning-After Spat

Lady Liberty’s birthday bash was great fun, but it’s the morning after, and it’s time to pay the tab. The hosts, Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee Iacocca and Secretary of the Interior Donald P. Hodel, are at each other again, squabbling over the check.

The four-day centennial celebration for the Statue of Liberty cost $30 million--about half what it cost to refurbish the monument itself. Laser-lighted, star-studded Liberty Weekend was supposed to pay for itself, which it didn’t quite do. The sale of television rights helped offset the cost, but ticket sales, which were to make up the difference, were dismal. Liberty Weekend may be millions in the red.

Iacocca, who once paid off a pretty big debt himself, thinks that the Statue of Liberty Foundation, which he chaired, should foot the bill. After all, the foundation has the cash. It raised nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, only part of which it has spent. Hodel, who fired Iacocca last February from a Statue of Liberty advisory commission, insists that to pay for the party would breach the trust of the contributors.

We suspect that the majority of the people who donated money did so to give Lady Liberty a facelift, not the gala that went with it. The foundation, however, appears to have the legal authority to pick up the tab. In any case the matter is not likely to be settled for weeks, until attorneys are marshaled and ticket receipts counted.

But why all the fuss? Hodel has offered to help Iacocca raise the money, and the two have a number of alternatives. Iacocca could go on television for Lady Liberty as he did for Chrysler. Or he might donate a few million from the proceeds of his best-selling book. ABC, which made a cool $16 million over the weekend, might pitch in a little. Best of all, the two could charge admission to their next public spat.