Investigate the Activist Mayors of West Hollywood Who Are Cashing In

We are calling on the Public Integrity Division of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California to investigate three former Mayors of West Hollywood: Lindsey Horvath, John Erickson and Chelsea Byers. Each took a paycheck from an outside employer whose business ran through City Hall, and each employer signed them on as Mayor or as the incoming Mayor. The City and its voters appear powerless to hold them accountable under the law. Residents are outnumbered by an organized machine: Byers lists 28 labor unions among her endorsers, one of them, UNITE HERE Local 11, has formed its own committee to elect her slate, and the billboard industry has put $77,999 behind the same three candidates. With money and political favors flowing among them, they are well resourced to cover their conflicts of interest.

A West Hollywood council seat is a part-time post with modest pay: about $1,700 a month under City ordinance. The title of Mayor rotates through the Council each year, and it is largely ceremonial: ribbon cuttings, proclamations, a name at the top of every press release. Over the past decade, though, the title has been worth a lot more to some entrepreneurial councilmembers. Most people who serve on a council like this keep the careers they already had, a law practice, a small business, a job across town, and work to keep that work clear of the City’s business.

Horvath, Erickson and Byers went the other way. Each took a job that put them where politics, policy and profit meet: paid by an employer whose interests ran straight through the Council they led.

First they became Mayor. Then came the paycheck.

• Horvath: a billboard agency put the Mayor on contract four months into her term.
• Erickson: a Latino advocacy group lined up the Mayor as its new chief of staff before his term ended, 78 days before he filed to run for State Senate, a race in which Latino leaders including Senators María Elena Durazo and Lena Gonzalez and Supervisor Hilda Solis would endorse him.
• Byers: a housing lobby hired the incoming Mayor.

Each employer had business before the City Council. Each of the three voted on that business without stepping aside.

And each used the seat to climb. All three ran again this year: Horvath was re-elected to the County Board of Supervisors in June; Erickson is on the November 3 ballot for State Senate; and Byers, who spent her entire year as Mayor on the housing lobby’s payroll while advocating for SB 79, is on the same ballot for re-election.

1. Horvath: the billboard agency hired the Mayor

Lindsey Horvath won back her council seat on March 3, 2015, by 69 votes. She was sworn in on March 16, and the same night the Council voted to make her Mayor, to be installed at the reorganization meeting on April 20. By April 20 she was presiding.

Four months into the mayoralty, Leroy & Rose, a Los Angeles billboard and movie-poster design agency, put the Mayor on contract. Horvath's own professional profile dates the engagement to August 2015, with the title “Marketing Advertising Specialist.” She worked for Leroy & Rose as a direct contractor, and for the next seven years the agency was the only source of outside income she reported, on seven Statements of Economic Interests signed under penalty of perjury.

It was not a stranger hiring a stranger. From 2009 to 2013, Horvath was a senior account executive at Cold Open, a Venice agency that makes movie posters and key art. Melchior Lamy was Cold Open's creative director until 2012, when he left to found Leroy & Rose. Chris Cotu, Leroy & Rose's executive creative director, also came from Cold Open.

Now set the agency’s own record against hers.

What was the agency doing in those quiet years? Almost nothing anyone could see. The only reason we know it did any work at all is outside the company’s own record: an independent movie-poster archive credits it with one poster in 2013, one of 23 on a campaign shared with at least three other agencies, and three in 2014, and a few early staff list it on their own professional profiles from 2014. The company itself published nothing, filed nothing for 2013 and held no California registration. Its public face came back only after Lindsey Horvath declared, and the contract came after she was Mayor.

On October 5, 2015, two months after the contract began, Mayor Horvath chaired the vote that started the City’s own digital billboard on Sunset Boulevard, seeking proposals for a pilot on City land. It became the Sunset Spectacular, which she moved to approve in 2018.

Politics. The industry she voted on paid for her re-election. Orange Barrel Media and its executive vice president each gave her committee the $500 maximum eight weeks after she moved to award Orange Barrel the City’s own digital billboard. The independent committee supporting her 2019 re-election drew $40,000 to $50,000 from outdoor-advertising interests, including $5,000 from Orange Barrel. In 2022 she was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, a full-time seat with a full-time salary. We called it political escape velocity. And the billboard money has followed her network. This fall, a committee formed to elect three West Hollywood council candidates, Chelsea Byers, Helen Krieger and Jonathan Cottrell, has taken $77,999 from the billboard industry: $45,000 from Orange Barrel Media, $18,000 from Big Outdoor, $9,999 from the billboard company iKahan Media, and $5,000 from Seymour Consulting Group, the firm that files billboard applications for Big Outdoor and others at City Hall. That is 59 percent of everything the committee has raised. Lindsey Horvath has endorsed all three.

Policy. Across her elected term the Council took up 59 billboard and off-site signage items. Lindsey Horvath moved, seconded or presided over many of them, including the motion approving the City’s own digital billboard in 2018 and, as Mayor in July 2021, the hearing that converted the rooftop at 9157 Sunset to digital, a board that had carried her own agency’s Warner Bros. work six and a half months earlier. The minutes record no disclosure of her employer and no recusal on any of them. The Horvath File lays out every item.

Profit. On her own forms, Leroy & Rose paid her between $10,001 and $100,000 a year, on seven consecutive annual statements. The engagement ended in December 2022, the same month she left the Council for the County.

The paycheck was not the only perk. The job and the office opened the same doors. Her own Instagram shows Lindsey Horvath at HBO’s Emmy parties in 2017, 2018 and 2019, ten posts in all, most of them geotagged in West Hollywood. HBO was a Leroy & Rose client. Her posts do not say whether she was there for the agency or for the City, and her disclosure forms for those years list no HBO gift. Either way, the contractor and the councilmember walked into the same room. On New Year’s Day 2021, as Mayor, she photographed her agency’s Warner Bros. billboard on the Sunset Strip and posted it to her own account, thanking the studio “for the opportunity.”

2. Erickson: Voted City Money to His Own Employer, Then Hired by a Latino Organization

John Erickson came to the Council in December 2020 already holding a conflicted job. He was a public affairs executive at Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, which ran a clinic in West Hollywood and held a City services agreement. On September 19, 2022 he made the motion approving $89,446 in City funding for his employer. The City rescinded that vote seven weeks later under an item titled “Correction of Processing Error” and retook it with his recusal. A year later, on September 18, 2023, he made the motion that approved the renewal containing $91,235 for Planned Parenthood, again without recusing. That vote was never corrected.

The Council elected him Mayor on December 18, 2023, and he was installed on January 16, 2024. Before his year as Mayor was over, he had a new job lined up.

Alliance for a Better Community is a Los Angeles Latino policy-advocacy nonprofit. It announced him as its new chief of staff in January 2025, after his term as Mayor ended. Its own website shows the job was set before that. Our forensic audit of the website’s public metadata shows that his “John M. Erickson, Ph.D., Chief of Staff” page was created at 8:30 a.m. on December 16, 2024. His headshot was uploaded to it two minutes earlier. He was still Mayor.

That evening, John Erickson chaired the West Hollywood City Council as Mayor. The minutes record that “Mayor Erickson nominated Vice Mayor Byers as the next Mayor.” He remained Mayor until the installation meeting on January 21, 2025. One week later, on January 28, the Alliance announced on Instagram that it had “added two new leadership roles to the team,” the first being “John M. Erickson, Ph.D., who will serve as Chief of Staff.” We noted the January date at the time, when another outlet sold the move as breaking news in June.

Five weeks after the announcement, on March 4, 2025, he filed to run for the State Senate. His endorsers include Latino leaders from across Los Angeles politics: State Senators María Elena Durazo, Lena Gonzalez and Sasha Renée Pérez, and Supervisor Hilda Solis.

The employer was explicit about what it was buying. The bio it published sells his office: “As a councilmember in West Hollywood, John brings over 14 years of experience in shaping advocacy campaigns and policies.” In February 2026, when this site and WEHOonline each quoted it, the page said he led the Alliance’s “ongoing policy development and strategic lobbying efforts.” By May the sentence had been rewritten to “organizing strategic community initiatives, as well as overseeing day-to-day operations.” By August the page was gone. On October 16, less than three weeks before the election, it came back, carrying the rewritten wording.

Politics. Erickson finished first in the June 2 primary for State Senate District 24 and faces Brian Goldsmith on November 3. The office the Alliance put at the top of his bio is the office he is using to leave.

Policy. On October 20, 2025, Councilmember Danny Hang asked staff to explore “additional tools to address unpermitted and unlicensed sidewalk vendors.” John Erickson spoke last. On the City’s video he said: “working for uh a Latino immigration organization, I in good conscience cannot vote for this in its current form.” The item was tabled, 4 to 0, on the terms he asked for. That year, while he was its Chief of Staff, his employer was listed in support of SB 635, a state bill restricting how local agencies enforce sidewalk-vending rules. He did not name the Alliance at the meeting. He named his job as his reason, and then he voted. When the City Attorney was asked about it, she told WEHOonline in writing that his role “primarily involves operations and logistics.” His employer’s page said “strategic lobbying” when she wrote that.

Profit. First, a Planned Parenthood salary while he made the motions sending it City funding. Then a chief-of-staff salary at an advocacy organization, landed at the end of a mayoral year. The Alliance does not appear on any of his Statements of Economic Interests, so the amount is not public.

3. Byers: the housing lobby hired the incoming Mayor

Chelsea Byers took office on December 19, 2022. On December 18, 2023 the Council made her Vice Mayor, next in line to be Mayor under West Hollywood’s rotation.

On September 16, 2024, as Vice Mayor, she moved to accept an $8.2 million state grant tied to the Fountain Avenue streetscape, over a room of residents objecting to the bike lanes. It passed 3 to 2. On October 7, 2024 she seconded the new zoning rules for studio and micro-units, which also directed staff to study requiring “less parking” for them. That passed 3 to 2 as well. Without her vote, both would have failed.

The next month, weeks before she became Mayor, the Welcoming Neighbors Network put her on its payroll. That date is not our inference. It is the City Attorney’s. In her July 13, 2026 request to the state ethics agency, Lauren Langer wrote: “Her employment began in November 2024.” WNN is a national pro-density advocacy network whose California members, California YIMBY and Abundant Housing LA, co-sponsored SB 79. Byers was hired as its Municipal Policy Campaigns Manager, which means city-level housing policy, the level of government she sits in. The same letter says Byers is the only WNN employee located in California.

Six weeks into the job, on December 16, 2024, Byers was elected Mayor, on John Erickson’s nomination. That same morning, his own new employer had made his employment public on its website. Byers was installed on January 21, 2025 and presided for the full year on WNN’s salary.

When negotiations with WNN began is not public. Under state law an official may not take part in a decision involving someone with whom they are negotiating employment, and the state’s own ruling on Santa Monica flagged exactly that question. The record that would answer it is held by WNN and by Byers.

Politics. The network around her job is also the network around her campaign, and she helped build it. Her own campaign biography calls her “a founding board member of Abundant Housing LA.” The City’s own release for her installation as Vice Mayor in January 2024 says “She is a board member of Abundant Housing Los Angeles.” The group’s education fund lists her on its tax filings as a director in 2019 and 2020 and as Vice Chair in 2021 and 2022. Abundant Housing LA is a member of her employer’s network and a co-sponsor of SB 79, and on June 13, 2026 it signed a letter urging this Council to implement SB 79 in full. Now it endorses her re-election. Lindsey Horvath endorsed her at her campaign launch. Byers is on the ballot November 3.

Policy. In September 2025, with Byers presiding as Mayor, the Council voted 3 to 2 to redesign Fountain Avenue and remove about 210 parking spaces. Three months later her employer co-published a messaging guide for winning exactly that kind of fight. When residents asked the Council to pause a housing item and let the state decide whether she could vote on it, she voted against the pause on June 29, 2026. John Erickson was the only member who joined her. The City Attorney told the Council she was not prepared to make that legal determination. The state has published no answer since. The full paper trail is here.

Profit. A fixed salary she reports in the $10,001 to $100,000 range, according to the City Attorney’s letter, followed by a promotion from Manager to Director.

4. How they cover for each other

Horvath and Byers never sat on the Council together. Horvath’s last vote was November 21, 2022 and Byers’s first was December 19, 2022. What connects them is Erickson, and the record of how the three of them protect each other’s seats is short and specific.

• 2020. Mayor Horvath endorses Erickson for Council as “the person I trust to serve the people of West Hollywood with me” and funds his committee.
• March 15, 2021. The Council votes on a conflict rule telling officials to avoid “paid work in their personal or professional capacity that will come before their own city legislative body.” The minutes record the only two no votes: “Councilmember Erickson and Mayor Horvath.”
• January 22, 2024. Mayor Erickson initiates adding YIMBYtown, the pro-density movement’s national conference, to the list of trips the City will reimburse. Byers, by then on WNN’s payroll, appears on a YIMBYtown panel in September 2025. Whether the City paid for that trip has not been made public.
• December 16, 2024. Mayor Erickson nominates Byers for Mayor, the same day his new employer makes his employment public on its website.
• 2025 and 2026. Horvath endorses Erickson for State Senate and Byers for re-election.
• June 29, 2026. The Council votes 3 to 2 to ask the state whether Byers may vote on housing. The two no votes are Byers and Erickson.
• August 19, 2026. At the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency, the County's housing finance agency, Supervisor Horvath discloses a potential Levine Act conflict, the state rule that bars officials from deciding contracts involving their campaign contributors. Her appointed alternate takes her seat: Chelsea Byers, whose own conflict question was then sitting unanswered in Sacramento. Byers votes on every item, including a contract award, and moves a state lobbying contract herself. The agency's general counsel who announced that Byers could vote on everything is a partner at Best Best & Krieger, the same firm as West Hollywood's City Attorney.

Twice the Council was asked to put a guardrail on paid outside work. Twice the official with the most to lose voted no, and both times John Erickson voted no beside them.

Taken together, the record suggests a system built to absorb these conflicts rather than stop them. The guardrails get voted down. The same law firm advises the City and the County housing agency. And when Horvath's own conflict surfaced at the County's housing agency, her seat went to Byers, a councilmember whose conflict was still under question. That alone is a red flag. Byers has been Horvath's alternate on the County's housing finance agency since at least January 2024, and Horvath kept her there after the housing lobby put her on salary in November 2024, after the City Council referred her conflict to the state in June 2026, and after residents raised it before the agency's board in September 2026. A County Supervisor made a housing lobby's paid staffer her voice on the County's housing money. The conflicts did not end when Horvath left City Hall. They followed her to the County.

5. Why we are calling for an investigation

The record shows the same sequence three times. Win the seat. Become Mayor, or the incoming Mayor. Take a paycheck from an organization with business before the Council. Vote on that business without stepping aside. Use the office to climb. Each employer was buying something a private citizen could not sell: a sitting Mayor, or the next one.

The warnings were already on the record. In Santa Monica, the Fair Political Practices Commission barred a councilmember paid by a pro-housing nonprofit from his city’s housing decisions. In West Hollywood, the City Attorney, asked at a Council meeting whether Byers had a conflict, declined to clear her. And the City itself undid the 2022 motion Erickson made to fund his employer, then let his 2023 motion stand.

What the public record cannot show, investigators can compel: the job offers, the negotiations, the dates each one began. That is why we are calling on the Public Integrity Division of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California to investigate all three.

Two of them are on your ballot on November 3. Ask them when the job offer came, and who was Mayor when it did.

Sources

• City of West Hollywood Council minutes: March 16, 2015 (Horvath named Mayor); April 20, 2015; October 5, 2015 (pilot digital sign); March 15, 2021 (conflict rule); September 19, 2022 and September 18, 2023 (Planned Parenthood funding); December 18, 2023 (Erickson Mayor, Byers Vice Mayor); September 16, 2024; October 7, 2024; December 16, 2024 (Byers elected Mayor); January 21, 2025 (installation); October 20, 2025 (sidewalk vendors, with video); June 29, 2026 (FPPC referral).
• Alliance for a Better Community website records: staff page, created December 16, 2024, 8:30 a.m.; headshot, uploaded December 16, 2024, 8:28 a.m.; Instagram announcement, January 28, 2025. Captured and preserved October 20, 2026.
• City Attorney Lauren Langer, request for advice to the Fair Political Practices Commission regarding Councilmember Byers, July 13, 2026.
• Lindsey Horvath, Statements of Economic Interests (Form 700), 2015 to 2022; Leroy & Rose, California Secretary of State registration, August 7, 2015.
• California Secretary of State, State Senate District 24 returns; Daily Bruin, “Erickson, Goldsmith advance to November general,” June 13, 2026.
• Friends of Chelsea Byers, Helen Krieger, and Jonathan Cottrell for West Hollywood City Council 2026 (FPPC ID 1495847): Forms 460 for Jan. 1 to Sept. 19 and Sept. 20 to Oct. 17, 2026, and Forms 497 filed through Oct. 21, 2026, from the City of West Hollywood's NetFile portal. Endorsement pages of the Byers, Krieger and Cottrell campaigns, captured Oct. 23, 2026.
• Full documentation: The Horvath File, The Erickson File, the Byers paper trail.