It’s not entirely clear that planning for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles actually requires a task force chaired and vice-chaired by the president and the vice president of the United States. At least one of them has a day job that would seem to be full-time.
But preparing for the Olympics will certainly be a herculean task as we for the third time host athletes and fans from around the world.
So, whatever their political differences, LA28 President and Chair Casey Wasserman and Mayor Karen Boss say that they welcome the federal help. The task force “marks an important step forward in our planning efforts and reflects our shared commitment to delivering not just the biggest, but the greatest Games the world has ever seen in the summer of 2028,” Wasserman said this week.
Three years out, the city and the LA28 nonprofit are publicly swinging into high gear for Olympic planning. They have high bars to clear — the 1932 Games, the tenth in modern times, were successful ones, seeing the first Olympic Village for athletes’ housing, the first iconic victory podiums, the creation of the Memorial Coliseum. And the 1984 Olympics, bucking great fears about traffic jams and cost overruns, were a miracle: Great weather, flowing freeways, a huge fiscal surplus that still funds athletics here.
LA28 has billed the Games as a “no cost” event for the city. Negotiations are ongoing for reimbursing City Hall for police and other costs — technically, anything above a normal day here. But security, trash removal, paramedics — the logistics are complex, and expensive. Especially for a city in a precarious financial state that only recently closed a billion-dollar budget deficit. Interestingly, the president’s recent tax-and-spending bill includes $1 billion for security and planning at the Games. But no one really knows how that money will be spent, or who will control the spending. If Trump deploys the military here for security, as he hinted at this week, will that dig into the billion? Will administration tightening of visa restrictions keep some nations’ athletes out? How will we deal with a Russia, and a Ukraine?
The bottom line for Angelenos — along with enjoying the Games — is ensuring that we don’t get stuck with a large bill when we were promised to at worst break even.