City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who is challenging Mayor Karen Bass in the Nov. 3 election, was endorsed on Sept. 10 by former City Controller Laura Chick. Raman also announced the launch of a mobile billboard campaign and interactive website showing the cost to communities of the city’s Convention Center expansion.
During a news conference at Balboa Park in the San Fernando Valley, Chick said she supported Raman’s bid for mayor, citing the councilwoman’s vote against a “personnel contract” and the convention center project “despite enormous pressure by powerful players at City Hall.”
Between 1993 and 2001, Chick represented the Third Council District, encompassing communities in the western San Fernando Valley, and later became the first woman to hold citywide office as the L.A. City Controller from 2001 to 2009. During her tenure as controller, she released more than 170 audits and reports.
Raman also discussed her campaign’s newest website, Convention.NithyaForTheCity.com, which allows residents to decide how they would have invested the approximately $100 million the convention center expansion project is estimated to take from the city’s General Fund each year.
The website calculates how many firefighters, 911 dispatchers, bus shelters, street lanes, curb ramps, sidewalk repairs and resurfaced streets that money could provide, according to Raman.
“I want to be absolutely clear: I wholeheartedly support infrastructure projects and downtown revitalization,” Raman said in her remarks. “But our city’s major investments have to be financially sustainable, and they can never come at the expense of keeping basic city services running, especially when many of those services are currently hanging by a thread.”
“This irresponsible and politically motivated spending is robbing communities, like here in the Valley, of the kind of services our tax dollars should be paying for, that would improve everyone’s quality of life,” Raman added.
In 2015, the convention center expansion project was estimated at $470 million. Approved in 2025, the financing plan calls for $2.68 billion in borrowing and $5.39 billion in total debt service.
Alex Stack, spokesman for Bass’ campaign, responded with a statement saying, “Raman is again lying about this being politically motivated – this convention center is something that was agreed upon by business, labor, community groups and just about all of her colleagues. It’s creating thousands of jobs, is already leading to more convention bookings and will benefit local
businesses with more people coming to L.A. to spend at restaurants, hotels and other iconic locations. Raman is anti-business and anti-jobs.”
The expansion project is being built through a phased delivery, with construction leading up to the 2028 Olympic Games, pausing for that event, then continuing through completion as soon as 2029. Once complete, the project will connect the South and West Exhibit Halls above Pico Boulevard, adding 190,000 square feet of exhibit hall space, nearly 40,000 square feet of meeting room space and 95,000 square feet for a multi-service room.
“The expansion of the L.A. Convention Center is crucial to our effort to revitalize the downtown area, create new economic opportunities and send a message to the world that L.A. is ready to compete and win on the global stage,” Bass said in a previous statement, marking a groundbreaking ceremony for the project on Oct. 1, 2025.
Since then, 16 large organizations have announced they will be holding major events at the expanded space starting in 2029. LA City Tourism officials have stated that those events will bring more than 100,000 people to the city and provide a boost to the local economy.
Even after the projected revenue is counted, the project is expected to cost the General Fund about $100 million annually for decades, according to Raman. Raman and City Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, voted against the expansion, citing concerns with fiscal management.
“Modernizing the Convention Center and revitalizing Downtown are important – but no responsible mayor would pursue them through a financing plan that drains essential services for decades,” Nithya said in a statement. “This was a politically motivated deal negotiated for the interests with the most influence at City Hall, not for the residents being told to accept broken streets, dark street lights and bus stops without shade.”
“Mayor Bass sided with powerful interests that wanted this project regardless of its cost – and some of those same interests are now spending to keep her in office,” Nithya added. “Valley residents and residents across the city deserve to know what that political bargain is costing them.”
The mobile digital billboard began traveling across the San Fernando Valley displaying the website’s comparisons. It’s a “moving receipt for the services City Hall chose to push aside,” according to Raman’s campaign.
At Balboa Park, the billboard showed that $100 million could provide 1,066 shaded bus shelters or plant and establish more than 38,000 street trees.
It will travel to the North Hollywood Arts District, Ventura Boulevard through Studio City, and to the Universal City/Studio City Metro Station.
The billboard will highlight that $100 million could have been used to repair more than 1.3 million square feet of sidewalk or install more than 2,200 ADA curb ramps, or for 400 lane-miles of streets or operate and maintain nearly 176,000 streetlights for a year, or fund approximately 625 firefighter and paramedic positions, or more than 700 civilian 911 dispatchers for a year.
“Angelenos deserve independent, fiscally responsible leadership that puts their essential services ahead of politically connected interests,” Raman said in a statement. “As mayor, I will never gamble with the city’s future while urgent needs in our communities go unmet.”
Cassandra Horton, a co-founder of the DTLA Residents Association, said her organization voted last year to take a position of support for the convention center expansion. The non-partisan organization does not endorse candidates and work with all elected officials to advocate on quality of life issues, specifically for downtown residents.
Horton described the expansion project as a big investment in downtown with the potential of reverberating across the city. “The convention center isn’t even finished yet. We’re kind of very
much midstream on a project that’s moving forward, and we already have seen a huge shift in terms of investment around that space – with the investment on behalf of AEG at LA Live, with Oceanwide (Plaza) moving in a positive direction, and that’s been nearly a decade of not having the forward progress that we need for our community there,” Horton told City News Service in a telephone interview.
Horton said, as a downtown resident, the organization understands that their community has a responsibility to generate revenue for the city. Downtown also takes on a lot more dense housing, and supportive services in Skid Row.
“I think it’s fair for people to ask questions about how the city’s money is being spent. Our hope, like why we really wanted to advocate for this, is to certainly benefit for the neighborhood, but for the whole city too,” Horton said.
Horton explained the convention center expansion is happening and quickly, and the question at hand is how the city will move forward with the investment they made.
“What are we going to do to make this investment that the city already chose to make as fruitful and as effective, and as catalytic as possible? So, I’d be curious about that from both of them because I don’t really know that there’s a way for us to put that toothpaste in the tube, you know,” Horton added.
