EDITORIAL : HEROES OF DEMOCRACY A FEW SENATORS STAND TALL AS INSIDERS SCHEME TO BLOCK ELECTIONS IN L.A.

MORE Democrats in the state legislature need the courage to stand up for democracy.

So far, only an elite handful have shown enough backbone to bolt from the party line and support Paula Boland'sAssembly Bill 2043, which would repeal an unconscionable 1977 law that gives the Los Angeles City Council absolute veto power to block elections involving secession.

Now there are signs that Democrats in Sacramento are making a final push to kill the bill or at least hold it hostage for political horsetrading.

If they kill it, they will have protected City Hall while spitting on the public, depriving voters of their fundamental democratic right of self-determination.

And whether the bill passes or not, Democrats from the Los Angeles area are risking far too much as they target it. They're spending their political capital on that while their colleagues from other parts of the state are securing real benefits for their districts. For Democrats in the L.A. delegation, it will be a Pyrrhic victory at best.

However, two Democratic senators set a courageous example Wednesday as they broke from the anti-democratic party line and voted for AB 2043 in the Senate Local Government Committee.

Sen. Herschel Rosenthal, D-Van Nuys, was one of only two Democrats on the committee who supported it. The other was Ruben Ayala, D-Rancho Cucamonga. Other committee members who supported it were Newton Russell, R-Glendale; Quentin Kopp, I-South San Francisco; and committee chairman William Craven, R-Oceanside.

Boland, R-Granada Hills, the bill's author, called Rosenthal ``the true hero of the day.''

Meanwhile, other Democrats are still lobbying to protect the City Council's iron-fisted authority - a foolish stance which will ruin the Democratic Party's reputation among voters who treasure their rights.

As Boland says often, the bill does not detach any area from L.A. It just ensures that the public can vote on proposals to detach areas of L.A., and stops the council from silencing the voters.

``While I'm not for secession, the bill is not about secession. It's about democracy,'' Sen. Rosenthal stated accurately.

If City Hall had wanted to stoke the flames of secession in the San Fernando Valley, it scarcely could have come up with a more effective tactic than the incendiary actions this week by the City Council's taxpayer-paid lobbyists and City Council President John Ferraro, who were in Sacramento fighting to kill the bill.

Although there is no active secession campaign sweeping the Valley, Ferraro's blundering is enough to spark such a movement. He insults his Valley constituents in Studio City, North Hollywood, Toluca Lake and Valley Village by telling them, in effect, that he will decide what's best - not them.

All of which only goes to show how important it is that the legislature halt the City Council's heavy-handed ways by passing Boland's bill and restoring the right of self-determination to the people of the San Fernando Valley.