Convention: Pay Up, L.A.

The city has no legal obligation to help Los Angeles’ private “host committee” meet a multimillion-dollar shortfall in funding the Democratic National Convention. But the bottom line is that if the money isn’t found somehow, it will be the city with egg on its face.

Los Angeles’ reasons for hosting the August convention still stand: exposure and image-building of the kind that a national convention of doctors or even dot-com businesses can’t supply. The national media attention is invaluable--assuming, of course, that nothing goes terribly wrong. Add to that the $135-million economic benefit expected when 7,000 delegates, many thousands more staffers and 15,000 media people come to town.

Noelia Rodriguez, a former aide to Mayor Richard Riordan and currently president of LA Convention 2000, has gone hat in hand to the City Council, asking for $4 million to help close a shortfall of up to $11 million in contractual obligations. Why now? “There are big checks that need to be written in the next two weeks” for construction of facilities inside Staples Center and media production fees, among other things, Rodriguez said.

The rest, she hopes and believes, will come from $7 million in belated private funding obtained with the help of the new chairman of the Democratic Party’s convention committee, Terry McAuliffe. An energetic fund-raiser, McAuliffe replaces Roy Romer, who resigned to become Los Angeles schools chief.

In their book-sized formal bid for the convention, Riordan and others promised that the private committee would take “full financial responsibility” for the staging of the convention. The reality is that the mayor, working hard to snag the convention for Los Angeles, oversold the private sector’s ability to raise all the cash needed for this mega-event, which was supposed to be the first privately funded national convention ever.

Now, with only eight weeks to go, the national Democratic Party is clamoring for the rest of the millions promised by the hosts. The City Council has every right to rail about broken promises and unfulfilled obligations--and someone should raise questions about the flawed planning and process that subjected the city to this last-minute bailout. But in the end, the council this week should approve the $4 million to ensure that the Los Angeles region plays the proper host in August to its guests from the rest of the nation.