EDITORIA OBJECT LESSON CRA'S DECENTRALIZATION PLAN IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF THINKING L.A. NEEDS.

ROBERT ``Bud'' Ovrom has proposed a reorganization of Los Angeles' Community Redevelopment Agency that will decentralize it into seven zones and put the workers where the people are.

This is a positive move by an agency that for too long has beenpreoccupied by downtown and making land speculators and developers rich at the expense of the neighborhoods of the city.

Ovrom, the CRA chief, dreamed up the plan as a way to oversee and manage redevelopment projects better in the city's far-flung neighborhoods. It makes sense, but it's hardly a shoo-in.

The CRA board approved the plan Thursday by a tight 3-2 vote, and the City Council - which remains the Downtown City Council more than the Los Angeles City Council - must endorse the plan as well. It won't be easy to win over City Hall. Bureaucrats hate Ovrom's plan because it flies in the face of the operating theory of concentrating everything in and on downtown, common sense and public benefit be damned.

One 20-year CRA vet criticized the plan and Ovrom for running the agency like a business. In many quarters, that's a compliment, not a complaint.

It's typical that the status-quo city government officials would fear an innovative plan, particularly one that operates on sound business principles and not political pandering principles.

In fact, Ovrom's decentralization plan should be replicated in every department from planning to police.

Why have all the workers concentrated in one area, when much of their work is 25 miles away? Where's the sense in encouraging an employee to drive downtown for work from his or her Van Nuys home only to return to the Valley in a city car? There's a reason that private corporations don't do things like this. It's bad business - it costs money, wastes time, adds traffic to the roads and pollutes our air.

City Hall should endorse Ovrom's plan. It's not just good sense, but he's got a track record of success for which he was hired. Los Angeles scored a coup 18 months ago when it lured Ovrom away from Burbank, where he had been city manager and performed an economic miracle in making downtown Burbank and much of the rest of the city truly beautiful.

If L.A. wants the same results, it's going to have to emulate Ovrom and run the city like a business whose shareholders are the residents.