The mayor-elect can choose her senior advisers, but running Los Angeles will require experienced administrators, clear responsibility and cooperation with a City Council that largely supported Karen Bass.
Winning an election is one thing. Getting Los Angeles City Hall to work is another.
Nithya Raman defeated Mayor Karen Bass by promising a city government that delivers better results. Now comes a different challenge: choosing the people who will run it.
For residents, the stakes are familiar. A streetlight stays broken. A housing permit sits unanswered. A family seeking homelessness services gets passed between agencies. City Hall has departments responsible for these problems, but residents do not always know who is accountable when nothing gets fixed.
Raman’s first major decisions will help determine whether that changes.
Who will actually run City Hall?
One idea attracting attention is a chief operating officer, someone responsible for coordinating the daily work of city departments.
Rick Cole, a former Los Angeles deputy mayor who advised Raman’s campaign, has advocated that approach, along with stronger financial oversight.
Cole told the Los Angeles Times that Raman intends to take a hands-on approach to city management. He criticized the city’s limited ability to measure the results of public spending, saying, “L.A. has been flying blind when it comes to measuring the impacts of the dollars spent.”
The argument is straightforward: when several departments share responsibility for a problem, someone needs the authority to bring them together and make sure the work gets done.
Raman has not publicly confirmed that she will create a chief operating officer position or announced who would fill it. Cole and Andrea Conant, her council office chief of staff, have been identified in reporting as likely transition leaders, not formally confirmed appointees.
A new executive title would mean little without clear responsibilities, authority and measurable expectations.
What Bass’s administration can teach her
Bass entered office with experienced advisers and a leadership structure that included deputy mayors responsible for housing, infrastructure, public safety and other priorities.
She also made changes as her administration faced growing pressure.
In September 2025, Bass appointed Mitch Kamin as chief of staff. In January 2026, she named additional senior officials to oversee city services, policy coordination and communications.
Those appointments show that Bass had a management structure and sought to strengthen it. Whether that structure consistently delivered effective coordination is a different question.
The January 2025 wildfires brought intense scrutiny of emergency preparation and leadership. The later warehouse fire in Boyle Heights raised further concerns about coordination and communication with affected neighborhoods.
In Parriva’s reporting on the Boyle Heights fire, Assemblymember Mark González described shortcomings in the response and called for stronger emergency planning.
Neither incident proves that Bass chose the wrong administrators. Emergency response involves multiple agencies, and responsibility cannot be assigned simply because a mayor was in office.
Bass also pursued major homelessness and public-safety initiatives, including Inside Safe. Her administration pointed to progress in moving people indoors and reducing certain crimes, even as questions remained about long-term outcomes and oversight.
One revealing example came from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. LAist reported in September that the chair of its audit committee was replaced after pushing for stronger financial oversight. The commission chair, a Bass appointee, said the reassignment was within her authority. Critics, including Cole, questioned the decision.
The dispute illustrated how accountability can depend not only on having oversight bodies, but also on whether those bodies can obtain information and act on it.
For Raman, the lesson is not simply to hire different people. It is to establish a system in which administrators know what they are responsible for, problems are reported early and failures lead to corrective action.
What she can change without the Council
The mayor has substantial authority, but Los Angeles does not operate like a private company with one executive making every decision.
Under Section 231 of the Los Angeles City Charter, Raman can hire staff within budget limits, supervise most city departments and issue executive directives consistent with existing law.
That gives her considerable room to organize her office and assign senior advisers to coordinate city services.
Appointing department leaders is more complicated.
Charter Section 508 generally requires City Council confirmation for department chief administrative officers. The Council has 45 days to reject covered appointments, and special rules apply to certain positions.
Raman could create a coordinating role within her office more readily than a permanent citywide executive with new legal powers. A broader restructuring could require legislation, funding or changes to the Charter, depending on its design.
That makes the qualifications of her appointees important and their relationships with the Council just as important.
She needs the Council that supported Bass
Raman faces an unusual political challenge.
As it has been widely reported, none of her fellow councilmembers endorsed her campaign. Most supported Bass, although several have since expressed willingness to cooperate with the mayor-elect.
The Council controls important budget and legislative decisions. It also participates in confirming department leadership.
Raman will need people who understand city operations, but also know how to negotiate, resolve disagreements and build support for changes that cannot happen through mayoral directives alone.
That requires more than political loyalty.
Her senior team will need experience managing public budgets, working with employees and unions, overseeing complex services and explaining decisions to residents.
As Parriva examined during the campaign, Raman and Bass offered different approaches to improving the city. The election settled who would lead. It did not settle how those improvements would be delivered.
How will residents know whether her team works?
The first appointments will reveal something about Raman’s priorities. Their performance will matter more.
If she promises faster housing permits, residents should be able to see how long approvals take. If she wants better street maintenance, the city should report whether repair times improve.
The same applies to emergency response, homelessness services and public spending.
That means identifying the person responsible, establishing a credible starting point and reporting results regularly.
It also means acknowledging when a program falls short rather than changing the measurement or declaring success too early.
These are the questions Parriva raised in its earlier examination of how to measure whether Los Angeles government is improving.
Raman’s next decisions will provide the first answers: whom she appoints, whether she pursues a chief operating officer, how much authority she gives department leaders and whether she can establish a productive relationship with the Council.
She won by convincing voters that Los Angeles could work better.
Now she must build a team capable of showing them that it does.
