New York voters narrowly approved what had seemed an uncontroversial ballot question involving a sporting complex near Lake Placid where the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics were held.

It was New York's only statewide referendum on Nov. 4 ballots, and it wound up passing by only around 4 percentage points. New Yorkers were being asked belatedly to amend the state constitution to authorize Nordic ski trails and other facilities that already were built on protected land — without taking the proper legal steps at the time.

The amendment was needed because the Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic Sports Complex had expanded decades ago onto land that was declared "forever wild" in the constitution in 1895. That should not have happened without tweaking the constitution first to allow development there.

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