NICK'S VIEW - Wonderland Los Angeles, a global symbol of dreams, myths, and possibilities, will take center stage at the 2028 Olympic Games.
Of course, the Games will be staged by LA28, the organizing committee, a legal entity with a finite lifespan. Whereas LA28 is temporary, Los Angeles is permanent.
The Olympics must be remembered as a test of civic competence. The world will judge Los Angeles, not the temporary apparatus assembled to run the Games, and the city will bear the reputational cost if anything goes wrong.
Unfortunately, adverse flareups have proven that LA28 is a deficient and uncooperative partner for the City of Los Angeles. Councilmember Monica Rodriguez once warned the organizing committee’s chief executive officer that “Bankruptcy cannot be the legacy of these Games” and accused the organization of a lack of financial transparency.
As I have stated previously, the old Greek saying, “You can knock all you want on a deaf man’s door,” is applicable here. Despite repeated demands, the city cannot sustain a partnership with LA28 built on partial information, delayed agreements, and optimistic assurances lacking operational detail.
Documented evidence proves that LA28 is an unreliable partner for Los Angeles. It is consistently slow, opaque, and insufficiently responsive in ways that materially affect the city’s ability to prepare for the Games.
As a result, Los Angeles now faces a slow, drip-drip-drip torturous pattern of disclosures from LA28, a negotiation approach that pressures the city to absorb costs the organizing committee should have anticipated years ago. The latest example is the 300 police vehicles needed for Olympic venues—a requirement LA28 has long known about but revealed only in fragments, each disclosure pushing the city closer to paying for equipment that should be LA28’s responsibility.
On August 19, the City Council’s Budget & Finance Committee, delayed the request for the patrol vehicles pending a report from the City Administrative Officer on better funding options, whether some of the cost could be reimbursed by the LA28 organizers, and whether an early State of California “state of emergency” could be declared for the Games period, which would allow “mutual aid” support from other local law enforcement agencies to be obtained.
The police cars are only the beginning. LA28’s pattern of slow‑rolled disclosures—a procedure by which accountability is delayed and oversight made harder—now extends across traffic control, sanitation, emergency medical services, and security costs that exceed federal coverage — all of which the city is being nudged to absorb.
This incremental demand, one of many, doesn’t build city trust; it erodes it. And it leaves Los Angeles, not LA28, holding the financial and reputational risk if the Games stumble. The organizing committee may stage the Olympics, but the city is being maneuvered into underwriting them.
LA28 is seriously failing to act as a genuine, collaborative partner.
For the record, the city’s enhanced services are the extra, above‑normal amenities Los Angeles must provide specifically because the Olympics are happening, and which LA28 is obligated to pay for. But each enhanced service comes as a steady stream of drip-drip-drip obligation requiring Los Angeles to deal with labor, equipment, and operational expenses without firm guarantees of reimbursement. It does not represent a well-defined plan by LA28.
Under the Host City Contract framework, any city service provided above normal levels because of the Games must be reimbursed by LA28. However, the city must front the costs, and gaps in transparency, timing, and financial clarity make that obligation far less secure than it appears. Therefore, reimbursement is only guaranteed in principle — not in practice.
Another urgent unresolved question is who will clear encampments and relocate the 6,000 unhoused people within Olympic security perimeters. City officials have asked LA28 to help cover the cost, but LA28 has refused to fund outreach, relocation, temporary housing, or services for residents displaced from red zones. That leaves local government with an unfunded mandate, forcing an already strained city to absorb the political and humanitarian fallout of an Olympic footprint it neither designed nor controls.
This situation poses an ominous risk for Los Angeles if conditions near the Games spark civil unrest. I believe that leaders must act early and decisively, not merely react after the damage is done. Mayor Karen Bass and challenger Councilmember Nithya Raman are in the spotlight, yet neither has spoken publicly about this deeply troubling issue.
Another disquieting sign came from last Thursday’s Regional Council meeting of the Southern California Association of Governments, Stephanie Wiggins, Metro’s chief executive, warned of what I would call transportation Armageddon during the Olympics. ( CitywatchLA : The Specter of a Traffic Armageddon is Looming for the 2028 Olympic Games, April 13, 2026) “If we don’t get the funding from the Federal government, we’re in a lot of hot water in the region,” she said. Wiggins added " We`ve made it clear: we`re not going to deliver the service for the Games on the backs of our customers.....So if we find ourselves where we`re not getting the funding that we need, it just means LA28 will just have to find some other delivery partner for it".
As far as the timing of funding commitments, Wiggins explained " We think this fall, and basically the end of the calendar year, December 21st".
The financial consequences from such an occurrence would be staggering and could push the city closer to bankruptcy.
Sadly, this is not a partnership. It is a process known as cost‑shifting by attrition, whereby a partner engages in small, repeated, delayed, or fragmented disclosures, rather than presenting the full cost upfront. In this way it makes city resistance harder over time. In other words, LA28 is maneuvering the city into absorbing costs through political fatigue.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, chair of the Budget & Finance Committee, expressed strong skepticism about using $30 million in city funds to buy new LAPD patrol cars for the 2028 Olympics. At her direction, the City Administrative Officer will review alternative funding options.
This is not enough! In fact, it is a grossly inadequate response.
Sure, the Host City Contract legally binds the city to act as the ultimate financial backstop, but there is a more definitive leverage that must be employed to reduce the extra burden LA28 is placing on the back of city taxpayers—air the city’s public complaints and seek committee-level showdowns. A strong public pushback can become a high-pressure negotiating tactic to extract better terms, more transparency, and greater financial cooperation as 2028 approaches.
Los Angeles must not suffer LA28’s drip‑drip‑drip of delayed disclosures in silence. It has a bully pulpit, and it should use it. City leaders must speak plainly about LA28’s lack of cooperation, and its inflexible and obstructive leaders, Casey Wasserman, chairperson and president, and Reynold Hoover, chief executive officer. This must become a public fight to protect taxpayers and the city’s global reputation.
Public candor will force LA28 out of the shadows of closed‑door negotiations and into the arena of public accountability, where incrementally disclosed obligations and cost‑shifting tactics cannot survive scrutiny. The Olympics may be a global spectacle, but the consequences land locally, and Los Angeles can rally broad public support simply by telling the truth loudly, repeatedly, and with the full authority of its elected leadership.
The bully pulpit is one of the strongest tools Los Angeles has when dealing with an uncooperative LA28, and it is a tool the city has barely begun to use. Public pressure will force LA28 to cooperate because it is sensitive to negative press and concerned about public distrust. It fears brand contamination, a civic backlash, and deep political scrutiny.
If the city doesn’t assert a stronger presence now, it will wake up to find that the bill for the Games has quietly migrated from LA28’s balance sheet to its own.
Los Angeles’s mayor and most city council members have tolerated LA28, Wasserman, and Hoover far too long while claiming that structural limits leave them with no choice. That is a lame excuse. Every city official should be pounding the table!
Even if LA28 was structured to operate beyond municipal control and answer to no one, the city must still use every available tool—public hearings, aggressive oversight, and the full force of the bully pulpit—to defend itself.
The Olympics may be cloaked in civic pride, but pride cannot replace accountability, and silence is no strategy. When a private committee slow-drips obligations, delays disclosures, and treats the city as a passive partner, elected leaders have a duty to confront that conduct openly and relentlessly.
Los Angeles cannot keep treating this negative outcome as unavoidable. It must respond with urgency, candor, and a public willingness to expose LA28’s failures.
An ancient Greek saying has it right: One must dare! When the city is threatened, leaders must confront the problem directly — not hide behind excuses.
(Nick Patsaouras is an electrical engineer, civic leader, and a longtime public advocate. He ran for Mayor in 1993 with a focus on rebuilding L.A. through transportation after the 1992 civil unrest. He has served on major public boards, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Metro, and the Board of Zoning Appeals, helping guide infrastructure and planning policy in Los Angeles. He is the author of the book "The Making of Modern Los Angeles.")
