The Los Angeles City Council took direct aim at LA28’s procurement plan Tuesday, warning that the $4 billion in Olympic spending tied to the 2028 Games could bypass local businesses entirely, leaving city contractors with nothing to show for the disruption.
Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson didn’t soften it. “You could have a scenario where no L.A. business does any business with LA28,” Harris-Dawson said at Tuesday’s committee hearing. That’s not a theoretical edge case for a council that also functions as the Games’ financial guarantor.
Here’s the core problem. LA28 says it’ll direct 75% of its total spending to the Greater L.A. region and carve out 25% specifically for small businesses. The LA28 organizing committee has also talked about prioritizing what it calls “hyperlocal” businesses within the city proper. But the plan’s definition of local stretches across five counties: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura. For council members representing Watts or Boyle Heights, a company headquartered in San Bernardino doesn’t feel like a local hire. It feels like a workaround.
Multiple council members pressed LA28 representatives Tuesday to replace the current language with binding commitments tied specifically to city businesses, not county-wide thresholds that dilute the intent. Harris-Dawson told LAist that Los Angeles “stands alone in terms of its commitment, its investment and the amount of risk that we’re bearing.” He added, “We think every possible avenue ought to be pursued to make sure you leave the people whole, if not better, off, than they were before this started.”
That phrase, “Los Angeles stands alone,” wasn’t rhetorical. The city isn’t just a host in the ceremonial sense. It’s the backstop. If something breaks down operationally or financially during the 2028 Games, L.A. taxpayers are the ones holding the bag.
John Reamer, who runs the city’s contracts department, brought a different kind of concern to Tuesday’s hearing. His office hadn’t seen the procurement plan before LA28 published it. Didn’t review it. Wasn’t consulted. Reamer said that gap revealed something about how LA28 sees the relationship. “[I believed] that LA28 would allow us to give input, and they would take that input, and we would discuss that input and we would agree upon that input and it would be part of the plan,” Reamer said. It wasn’t.
That’s a significant admission from a department head whose job is managing exactly these kinds of agreements. If the city’s contracts chief is learning about procurement decisions from a press release, something’s structurally broken in the partnership.
The contract fight isn’t the only friction point. The city and LA28 have also been stuck on a separate agreement covering what municipal services the city will provide during the Games, and neither side has publicly resolved how much financial exposure Los Angeles could carry if Olympic Construction costs spiral past projections. The organizing committee hasn’t set a public ceiling on the city’s liability.
For Angelenos, this is where the 2028 promise gets complicated. The pitch was always that hosting the Olympics would deliver economic opportunity to the city’s neighborhoods, not just to the region in a broad geographic sense. Small businesses, in particular, were supposed to benefit. The U.S. Small Business Administration has programs aimed at connecting small firms to federal and large-scale contracts, but local access still depends on how contracts are structured and who defines eligibility thresholds. A five-county definition of “local” doesn’t guarantee city businesses get a real shot.
What the council wants isn’t complicated: written, enforceable commitments that city-based businesses get a defined share of the spending, not a soft target buried in planning language. Harris-Dawson said “Los Angeles stands alone,” and the council’s position is that a city carrying that kind of risk is owed something more than a 75% aspiration applied to a five-county footprint.
Reamer put the expectation plainly. His office thought it had a seat at the table. It didn’t.