EDITORIAL : LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION TV AND FILM INDUSTRIES WIN SOME RELIEF FROM BUREAUCRATIC OVERKILL.

CALIFORNIANS can celebrate a small victory in the war against regulatory excess.

Gov. Pete Wilson recently signed into law a measure passed by the Legislature to drag Cal-OSHA back into the real world and relieve the television and movie industries of an overzealous, costly regulatory burden.

The bill - which the governor signed on Sept. 20 in a ceremony at the Warner Bros. studios in Burbank - will exempt production companies from the need to apply for a state Division of Occupational Safety and Health permit when constructing or dismantling a set more than 36 feet tall.

The need for the change became clear after Cal-OSHA issued a new interpretation of a 23-year-old state law and concluded that set construction is on a par with permanent construction.

That was surprising because of the obvious gap separating Hollywood's flimsy false-front sets from permanent, concrete-and-steel office buildings.

Even apart from that, one could hope that Cal-OSHA bureaucrats would have picked up on the fact that national and international building standards exempt film and TV production from the permit process. But that wasn't the case.

The unrealistic Cal-OSHA decision threatened to drive production jobs to other states, weakening this state's $20 billion, 500,000-employee entertainment industry. This shows how much damage can be done by errant regulations.

Of course, much good can be accomplished by pertinent safety regulations - and the film and TV production industries still are covered by a large number of Cal-OSHA regulations on temporary structures.

Also, the new law (which will take effect Jan. 1) provides that changes can be triggered if three or more serious set-construction accidents occur in a year. But that's unlikely, based on the industry's history.

And here's the real kicker: There is no record of any serious accident related to temporary set construction, even though dozens of sets are built or dismantled every day.