What Happened
All 15 councilmembers were present and voting; the day's first roll call recorded 15 ayes. Council Member Curren Price Jr. recused himself from Items 30, 31 and 34 "out of an abundance of caution" because his wife's employer had worked with applicants on those matters, and the Council took them separately. Council Member Katy Yaroslavsky continued Item 62 (CF 24-1315), the Television City project, to January 7; Council Member Ysabel Jurado continued Item 29 to January 7 and called Item 30 for comments; Council Member Imelda Padilla continued Item 5 to January 10; and Council Member John Lee continued Item 16 to March 18, 2025. Item 12 was continued to January 10 as well. Item 37, which carried an amending motion from Council Members Eunisses Hernandez and Jurado, was pulled and continued to Friday, December 13 after the Council President reported "further developments."
Two items drew discussion without dissent. On Item 30 (CF 20-1449), a Downtown Women's Center permanent supportive housing project in Council District 14, Jurado said the city had seen a reduction in unsheltered homelessness "because of projects like this," praised the Center's exclusive focus on women and gender-diverse residents, and noted the 97 units of extremely low-income housing the project will add; it passed with Price recused. On Item 77 (CF 24-0454), a Yaroslavsky–Lee substitute motion was introduced and both the substitution and the substituted item passed unanimously. Hernandez called Item 50 (CF 24-1016) for comments to explain her own motion directing city departments to gather existing and potential training materials for the city's boards, commissions and committees and build them into the onboarding process; she said she had met with planning and transportation commissioners who reported "a lack of uniformity in the training that they received" and a lack of training for some of the tasks they were asked to take on. It passed 15-0.
Item 66 — the Tourism Worker Ordinance (CF 14-1371-S13). After roughly six hours of testimony, questions and procedural maneuvering, the Council adopted a substitute motion raising the minimum wage for hotel and LAX workers to $30 an hour by the 2028 Olympics, 12-3, with Lee, Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez opposed. The substitute, presented by Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Price and seconded by Hugo Soto-Martinez, Heather Hutt, Tim McOsker, Jurado and Adrin Nazarian, directs the City Attorney to prepare a revised Living Wage Ordinance (LWO), which covers LAX workers, and Hotel Worker Minimum Wage Ordinance (HWMO), which covers hotels of 60 or more rooms, raising wages to $22.50 on July 1, 2025, $25.00 on July 1, 2026, $27.00 on July 1, 2027 and $30.00 on July 1, 2028. It applies the healthcare benefit payment to hotel workers the same way it applies to airport workers under the LWO, indexes that payment annually to the California Department of Managed Health Care's Large Group Aggregate Rates report, and adds a hardship exemption for concessionaires with 50 or fewer employees. It also requires an employee to give 30 days' written notice and an opportunity to cure before filing a civil action, and orders reports on limiting hotel housekeeping subcontracting (60 days), business assistance for airport concessionaires (45 days), enforcement staffing and budget (45 days), and annual economic impact assessments through 2028. Recommendation 11 receives and files eleven pre-filed amending motions, 23A through 23K.
The Council President moved the item by closing off debate. Price's motion to call the question carried 12-3, over Nazarian, Padilla and Rodriguez, and the question of whether to substitute carried 12-3 over Lee, Park and Rodriguez. Six amendments then failed in succession. A Rodriguez–Park motion to substitute the ECDJ Committee report's own terms — a hotel worker definition reaching contracted housekeeping, security, maintenance and front-desk staff, wages starting at $25.00 on February 1, 2025 and reaching $30.00 on July 1, 2028, with CPI-W indexing from 2029 — failed 6-9. Lee's Amending Motion 6, reviving Amending Motion 23A, failed 5-10, as did a Lee–Rodriguez motion to exclude workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement addressing wages and hours and to exempt limited-service hotels. A Padilla–Rodriguez motion to replace Recommendation 7, substituting a December 2025 review of economic conditions and 2019 occupancy levels for the 90-day housekeeping training implementation plan, failed 6-9. Harris-Dawson then called the question a second time, 11-4 over Lee, Park, Rodriguez and Yaroslavsky, cutting off Park's request to be heard on her own amendment. Park's motion to apply the wage increases only to hotels of 150 or more rooms failed 5-10, and her hardship exemption for LAX concessionaires under an existing lease failed 4-11, with Padilla joining the majority against it.
The debate divided along two axes. Supporters pointed to the Berkeley Economic Advising and Research (BEAR) study the Chief Legislative Analyst commissioned, whose author, Dr. David Roland-Holst, testified that "for the economy as a whole the benefits are 3 times the cost," that the analysis found no evidence of significant job loss, and that variation in employment in affected sectors since the state minimum wage took effect has been within one to three percent — "you have [a] 97 percent [chance] of keeping your job even if [the] minimum wage is implemented." He attributed food-sector weakness to "the tail of COVID and inflation," not wages, and said hotels are "unlikely to move across borders because of cost differences of this magnitude." Hernandez thanked the workers who "have not eaten in over three days," noting 28 of them were fasting outside the chamber. Soto-Martinez said he and Price had authored the substitute's Recommendation 4, directing rent relief, facade improvement, permit refunds and low-interest loan assistance for airport concessionaires, and drew the line plainly: "I believe we should be supporting those businesses, I just don't think that that support should be coming from the workers['] back. The workers should not take a pay cut."
Opponents argued both substance and process. Park said the decision could not be "made on false assumptions that nobody bothered to test" and predicted the city would "lose our small and medium size hotels and our boutique hotels and limited service hotels." Rodriguez, who supplied the sharpest process critique, said the Council President "decided to eliminate the opportunity for us as a policy making body to consider some of the amendments that many of us proposed" and that "to cherry pick certain amendments to be included in the substitute motion is not responsible policy making," adding that many of the affected businesses are minority-owned. Her voting button failed on the final vote; she asked to be registered as a No, and the President recorded the change before the tally was read. She said afterward that she had been "prepared to be a yes" with amendments and thoughtful conversation, "but the way that it's been handled is so foul and so disrespectful that I just, unfortunately, now can't [support] any part of it." Padilla, who voted yes, was equally critical of the process: "it felt like it was a back room deal because every time I asked my team, what is the update — there was never an update. Our legislative teams were never brought to the table." Lee, whose earlier substitute would have delayed $30 until a tourism "recovery" trigger and no later than 2030, warned against letting the current ordinance expire July 1, 2028, "right in the middle of the Olympics."
Items 67, 68 and 81 — LAPD donations and traffic enforcement grant. Hernandez called all three special for a separate vote, and the Council took them together, 13-2, with Hernandez and Soto-Martinez opposed. Items 67 (CF 24-1331) and 68 (CF 24-1326) accept non-monetary donations from the Los Angeles Police Foundation: an Allogy platform subscription for the LAPD Training Division valued at $500,000, and $32,602.50 in repairs to the obstacle course at the Ahmanson Recruit Training Center. Item 81 (CF 24-1352) authorizes the LAPD to retroactively apply for and accept a $6,650,000 Selective Traffic Enforcement Program grant from the State Office of Traffic Safety for October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025, including up to $70,000 for phlebotomist services. Neither the CAO nor the CLA completed a financial analysis of the two donation items, and the Public Safety Committee waived consideration of both.
Public comment ran nearly an hour and a half and was dominated by Item 66. UNITE HERE Local 11 and SEIU-United Service Workers West turned out heavily, and a Los Angeles County Federation of Labor representative said the Federation represents over 8,000 workers across the city, including those "who fasted the past three days in support," telling the Council that "the eyes of the labor movement are upon each and every one of you." A hotel worker who had testified for the 2016 wage ordinance said bosses were using "the same talking points you're hearing today," that workers won anyway and "the hotel industry thrived," and asked the Council to "stand with us again, because everything in price has gone up except wages."
The opposing testimony came largely from owners and operators of small and limited-service hotels, several of whom identified themselves as first-generation or family owners and asked repeatedly for the same specific concession: a carve-out for hotels of 150 rooms or fewer. One owner said that at "150 rooms or less, with no spa or bar, I cannot survive." That carve-out was exactly what Park's amendment would have granted, and it failed 5-10. General public comment, taken at the end, was largely unrelated to the agenda.