LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles City Council member Monica Rodriguez recently came across the Official Report of the 1984 Olympic Games and was struck by what she described as the disparity in the levels of transparency and cooperation between the local organizing committee for the 1984 Games and city officials compared LA28’s dealings with the city.
“I don’t feel like LA28 is behaving as a partner to us,” Rodriguez said in an interview with the Southern California News Group. “The LA84 board of directors meetings were accessible not just to the public but to the press, so when you take that to how things have been, how they’ve unfolded with LA28 it doesn’t feel transparent, nor does it feel like a partnership.”
Nearly nine months past a missed Oct. 1 deadline for LA28 and the city to complete a critical agreement to determine compensation to the city for extra services related to the Olympic Games, Rodriguez and other city council members said they have run out of patience with what they characterize as LA28’s lack of transparency, its failure to be responsive to council questions and concerns, filibustering by the organization’s CEO when appearing before the council or the council’s ad hoc committee on the Olympic and Paralympic Games and other stalling tactics on major issues.
“Taxpayers deserve to know, and I look forward to LA28 cooperation to make sure that we not only produce the best Games,” Rodriguez said, “but Games that are not going to land the city into bankruptcy.”
Council members are also frustrated by LA28’s failure to provide the council with a list of signed agreements the organization has secured with Olympic and Paralympic competition venues.
“There’s only growing momentum from colleagues that are also sharing their concerns about it, and LA28 just has to step up,” Rodriguez said. “There’s no way around it anymore. They can’t dance around it anymore, they’re running out of time, but there’s going to be a point where it’s just push is going to come to shove, and it’s not going to be pretty. So they need to be responsive to the concerns that we’re raising in a real way, and stop slow walking the ECRMA.”
That the Enhanced City Resources Master Agreement hasn’t been completed is emblematic, council members said, of LA28’s disregard toward city officials. The ECRMA will determine which beyond “normal and customary” city services such as police, transportation, and sanitation will compensate the city for.
City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto wrote in a March memo to the city council that “The ECRMA as drafted by LA28 limits the obligation to reimburse City costs before LA28 is permitted to create its own legacy fund with the surplus.”
Council president Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Rodriguez have introduced motions in recent weeks. The Harris-Dawson motion would require LA28 to pay for enhanced city services in advance.
“Reimbursement shall include the costs of ECR at the time of delivery,” the motion reads.
The Harris-Dawson motion also instructs city officials to “negotiate an amendment to the Games Agreement to ensure LA28’s contingency funds are available for ECR expenditures incurred by the City that are not reimbursed by any relevant entities, prior to those contingency funds being declared Surplus and disbursed to any Legacy Entity.”
The Harris-Dawson motion echoes a motion by Rodriguez earlier in April that calls on city officials “to prepare language for establishing a new section within the City Charter through the ongoing Charter reform process that codifies a ‘Zero-Cost Principle for the LA28 Games,’ ensuring that the City shall not incur unreimbursed costs associated with hosting the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games and no Legacy Fund shall be established until the City is reimbursed.”
Rodriguez in an April letter to Hoover, first reported by the Southern California News Group, criticized LA28 for what she described as a lack of “financial transparency.”
“Bankruptcy cannot be the legacy of these Games,” Rodriguez wrote in the letter.
City officials said they are concerned that security costs to the city could exceed the $1 billion in federal funding for security at the 2028 Olympics set aside in President Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Staffing the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games will cost the Los Angeles Police Department as estimated $1.15 billion, according to a memo from LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell to the city council’s Budget and Finance Committee this month. The LAPD’s annual budget is $2 billion.
The SCNG on Monday sent an LA28 spokesperson a request for comment detailing the concerns and charges raised by city council members. The spokeswoman did not respond.
“My concern is on the cost associated with security that has always been the primary point of concern for me, because this administration has not been a favorable actor towards Los Angeles financially,” Rodriguez said. “The issue around making sure that security costs are borne by LA28 in the ECRMA, I think, is important because I don’t want there to be any level of, you know, I don’t want it to be opaque in terms of who is expected to cover those costs, just because, again, LA28 potentially has more leverage to secure the support from the federal government that perhaps the city told me what, but I think the leadership with the president is, you know, how it’s been thus far towards Los Angeles, which I’m genuinely concerned about. So until we start seeing the resources and a firm commitment to cover the costs, we got to figure out a pathway to hold early 28 council accountable, given the circumstances that we’re experiencing.”
But council members have been particularly frustrated by what they call Hoover’s lack of responsiveness.
The city enacted a special 6% municipal tax on all ticket sales for the 1984 Olympic Games. This surcharge, along with a hotel tax increase, was used to fund local public services, host city obligations, and security costs associated with the event.
Councilmember Katy Young Yaroslavsky said the council “had a lot of conversation” about placing $1 a Olympic ticket tax on ballot for the June election but declined to do so after LA28 officials stressed the importance of keeping “tickets affordable.” Tickets for the 2028 Games come with a 24% surcharge. During an April 14 council meeting, Young Yaroslavsky asked Hoover “what percentage of that 24% is coming back to LA28 because I feel like we were misled when we were having conversations about that ticket tax.”
“I don’t know,” Hoover said, adding that he would have to get back to the council member.
More than a month later, Young Yaroslavsky still hasn’t heard back from Hoover, a spokesman for the council member said this week. Rodriguez said she also hasn’t heard back from Hoover or LA28 on the ticket surcharge.
“How did LA28 go about adding a 24% surcharge, and we’re not clear where that money is going, and who it’s benefiting?” Rodriguez said.
“That’s a really big problem,” she continued, referring to Hoover not responding to council members. “And I think again is it to cover any shortages of what they have not yet achieved in sponsorship? I don’t know. I’d like to know.”
Council members criticized Hoover’s most recent appearance before the council in which he insisted on reading a statement of talking points highlighting LA28’s ticket sales and sponsorship agreements while council members waited to question him.
“A time suck,” Rodriguez said. “You know, it was a lot of words, and it didn’t, I didn’t walk away feeling any more, any better informed, or any more comfortable about what we’re headed towards. So that’s why I’m looking at what legislative means do I have to help protect taxpayers.
“I desperately want these Games to be successful. I want there to be a positive legacy for residents, for every kid to feel inspired by what these games are all about, but I am not going to sell out taxpayers to make friends on this.”