LOS ANGELES — LA28’s continued lack of transparency and communication with Los Angeles city officials has created a “troubling picture” for the lead-up to the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games and jeopardized the relationship between the local organizing committee and the host city, Los Angeles City Council members charged on Wednesday.
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City council members pressed the city’s chief legislative analyst and city administrative officer during a meeting of the city’s ad hoc committee on the Olympic and Paralympic Games on whether LA28 is in breach of contract by failing to provide information to the city mandated by the Games Agreement between the local organizing committee and the city.
“This needs to be taken seriously and quickly because the opinion or set of facts in front of us suggests a troubling picture that will alter the relationship between the city, or certainly, you know, as long as this committee exists and I’m chairing it, it’ll alter our relationship as partners,” council member Marqueece Harris-Dawson said during a meeting of a city council ad hoc committee on the Olympic Games. Harris-Dawson is the committee’s chairman.
In particular, council members expressed frustration with LA28’s refusal to provide city officials, in writing, a list of contracts and their amounts.LA28 briefly showed the CLA and CAO the organization’s contracts in a PowerPoint presentation during a recent meeting.
“So LA28 is failing to meet the reporting obligation, which it seems like they are,” council member Katy Yaroslavsky asked CLA Sharon Tso and CAO LA Szabo. “Aren’t they in breach of contract?”
Tso stopped short of saying LA28 is in breach of contract, but city officials, at the council’s request in recent days, have asked LA28 to provide the council with a list of contracts with their terms and amounts. LA28 has not responded so far, Tso said.
“We’ve already elevated it to the dispute resolution process,” Szabo told the committee.
City officials have also asked LA 28 to purchase a $650 million insurance policy has protection in case the Games are cancelled. Tokyo took out a similar policy for the 2020 Olympic Games.
LA28 spokesperson Jacie Prieto-Lopez said in a statement to the Southern California News Group, “LA28 submitted our Annual Report on March 31, 2026, meeting our obligation to the City as we have every year. On Friday, the CAO and CLA posted their report on our Annual Report stating, “In compliance, LA28 submitted its Annual Report to the City covering the year ending December 31, 2025 (Attachment A), including all of the reporting elements required by the Games Agreement.”
“On Sunday afternoon, we were then notified by the City that they are requesting additional information. We are working through those requests now and remain committed to meeting our obligations.”
Wednesday’s meeting follows an August 25 data request from Los Angeles city controller Kenneth Mejia to LA28 demanding “the organization provide financial records and statements owed to the City of Los Angeles.”
“We all want a successful 2028 Olympic Games, but its success cannot be at the cost of transparency and accountability to LA taxpayers. Any event of this size and cost requires rigorous financial scrutiny, and I intend to use my full authority under the City Charter to open up LA28’s books,” Mejia said. “The Controller’s Office looks forward to LA28’s timely cooperation with our data request and we look forward to working with LA28 as a collaborative partner.”
Under the Games Agreement, LA28 is required to provide the city with a “list of all contracts (including the name, type, amount, term and purpose) of (LA28) pertaining to the 2028 Games that were entered into by (LA28) the prior Fiscal Year, valued in excess of $1,000,000 (which includes contractors possessing contracts with a cumulative value in excess of $1,000,000); an update on the insurance procured by the (LA28).”
“That’s a requirement that is plain,” Szabo said. “It’s unqualified and unambiguous. It is also a requirement that has been present in agreements between the city and LA28 since 2017, predating the Games Agreement that was then carried on, carried through in the Games Agreement, and our request is that they continue to comply with that. It doesn’t require that they produce the contracts themselves, but the list of the contracts and the amount, the purpose, and the type.
LA28 reported contracts totalling $687.2 million in an annual report provided to the city. LA28 has a budget of $7.263 billion, according to the report.
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“LA28 indicates that publishing specific contractors and contracting details within the Annual Report is financially detrimental and a risk to its future competitive contracts, partnerships, and sponsorship activities,” Szabo and Tso wrote in a September 25 report to the city council.
“I think I empathize with the concern that if all your contracts are public, it weakens your negotiating position,” Harris-Dawson said. “I will concede that to them. At the same time, I don’t concede that you just get to decide that we don’t see the contracts.”
LA28 officials briefly shared contract information with Tso and Szabo during a PowerPoint presentation in a recent meeting.
“It was a presentation that flashed on the screen very closely, and we went through it, discussed it, and that was the extent,” Tso told the committee Wednesday. “So we don’t have a list of it. We don’t have the use of the paper.”
“That is completely unacceptable,” said council member Hugo Soto-Martinez. “I think this needs to be given to us, again sympathetic to the competition on it, but there has to be some spreadsheet, right, that has as much information as every council member would like, especially on this committee, to get the first bite of the apple, right? Because to me, this is about really two things.
“Number one is like if we’re going to really have their focus on procurement, that’s going to show us what they’re paying for your goods and services and amounts and things like that. And we’ve talked ad nauseam about whether they use this system or that system. Like at the end of the day, like if they provide a spreadsheet with that information, hey, we got a lot of these smart people that can research and know who the hell we’re having actions on, right?
“And secondly, I think it’s also a question of being fiscally responsible. We see, you know, I’m just making this up, but like a $10 million contract is something that we’re like, well, the city would never pay $10 million for that, and we should be concerned about that because we’re the financial backstop affected, right? And so I think it’s important for LA28 to work with us on this one because without having that information, we are going to come up with our own conclusions, right?”
LA28, as part of an agreement with the city when Los Angeles was awarded the Games, established a $270 million contingency fund which is monitored by the city. The organizing committee also has comprehensive insurance policies as protection in case of natural disasters or security threats.
If there is a post-Games deficit, the city is responsible for the first $270 million after the $270 million LA28 contingency fund is exhausted. The state is on the hook for the next $270 million after the city. If the Games finish without a deficit, the contingency money will be directed to a legacy fund to support youth programs and other sports initiatives.
“The City of LA is the financial backstop if the LA28 Games result in a financial deficit,” Mejia said last month. “LA taxpayers are exposed to potentially unlimited financial obligations and deserve full transparency from LA28 related to all spending and revenue incurred in the process of planning and executing the 2028 Olympic Games.”
The contract dispute is but the latest instance in which city council members have charged LA28 with a lack of transparency.
“I had questions that my team posed repeatedly to LA28,” Yaroslavsky said. “We haven’t received any response from LA28 to these questions.”
Said Harris-Dawson, “At every turn it feels like either the ball is moving or we were supposed to get some information, and we didn’t. And so I just want to make sure that that’s clear to you all.”
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