EDITORIAL : JUST SAY NO; L.A. COUNCIL MISSES A CHANCE TO PUT ITS FOOT DOWN.

IT must be tough for the seven Los Angeles City Council members who supposedly represent the San Fernando Valley to remember the voters who elected them.

Just look at what Valley Seven did this week, joining the rest of the council in a unanimous vote to throw millions of taxpayer dollars to the MTA to continue spending in ways that insult and shortchange the Valley.

Council members even acknowledged that the Valley gets a raw deal, as they voted to provide the dollars for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to keep doing it.

We wonder, and the voters also must wonder, why the Valley Seven couldn't work up the gumption to vote no.

Of course, the Valley Seven has been selling out their constituents on transit issues for a long time.

The council decided to provide $58 million to the MTA's rail construction program - an operation which repeatedly has stiffed the Valley, depriving it of an equitable share. Everyone understands that it will continue to treat the Valley shabbily.

Valley Councilman Richard Alarcon cited a list of deadlines which the MTA is almost certain to miss, such as starting the Valley east-west rail line by the year 2007.

Here's the council's thinking: If the MTA doesn't meet the deadlines, then the problem-plagued agency will have to give back $50 million, under a June agreement with the city.

But hair-splitters say the MTA won't have to refund money until deadlines actually are missed, probably 2008 at the earliest, and until then the city should provide money for the inept MTA.

But that just doesn't add up.

The June agreement was a house of cards, and the council knew it when it voted for it. Since then, the evidence is even clearer. Federal authorities rejected the MTA's ``recovery'' plan as hopelessly unrealistic. Mayor Richard Riordan, the new chairman of the MTA board, ordered an audit which found the agency doesn't know its financial position and is running a deficit. And Riordan has said a Valley line won't be built in this lifetime, if at all.

So instead of going along with the charade this week, Valley council members would have better represented their mistreated constituents by putting a foot down and repudiating the sham agreement and the MTA's wasteful ways.

Instead, they went along with the herd, and agreed to go on misspending taxpayer money - knowing that the agreement lacks integrity, that the taxpayers aren't protected, and the Valley will get the short end of the stick.

Council members whose districts include part of the Valley - Richard Alarcon, Hal Bernson, Laura Chick, John Ferraro, Michael Feuer, Cindy Miscikowski and Joel Wachs - weren't on the ball this time.

They're not paying attention to the short shrift the Valley gets. They looked like they were part of the problem - not the solution - to the discontent in this community.