Mayor Karen Bass unveils her proposed 2026-2027 budget at her Los Angeles City Hall office in Los Angeles on Monday, April 20, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)
THERE IS A PASSAGE BURIED AT THE BOTTOM of page 38 of Mayor Karen Bass’ proposed budget that, to the untrained eye, reads like another speck of bureaucratic jargon in a 524-page sea of it:
Instruct the Office of Finance and the City Administrative Officer to report with recommendations to allow the pre-payment of Transient Occupancy Tax in advance of the 2028 Olympics from any payer that wishes to assist the City in accelerating critical infrastructure projects…
The budget is a Talmud-like text, abstruse and virtually inscrutable to someone not trained to read it. But there is great — potentially even explosive — meaning to be derived for those who know how to correctly decode some of its terse declarations.
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