EDITORIAL : PROP. 218 SUBTERFUGE; HOLD ON TO YOUR WALLETS: THE CITY COUNCIL WANTS TO GO OVER VOTERS' HEADS TO GET LEGISLATIVE PERMISSION TO RAISE 911 TAX SURCHARGE.

THE inability of the Los Angeles City Council to find all the waste in its $4 billion budget gives some members the foolhardy idea of raising taxes to help the Police Department maintain its 911 emergency system.

It's just like them, too.

Committed to spending money on employees and irrelevant programs instead of basic city services, like equipment for police officers to respond to emergency telephone calls, the big spenders try to connive new ways to pick the pockets of taxpayers and ratepayers.

In this case, the city may ask state lawmakers to give them permission to raise the 911 surcharge that appears on telephone bills.

Why do they want to take the long winding road to Sacramento? Because that way they can drive around Proposition 218, the 1996 statewide measure that requires voters to approve any tax hike.

Councilman Joel Wachs chided the prospect of avoiding the voters as ``ridiculous.''

Councilman Hal Bernson objected to the move as well, while the others signaled a willingness to go along for the ride.

Pickpockets like council members need to pick their marks carefully, so they voted to study the issue - a move that lets them pick the right moment when you're looking the other way.

The trouble is that it's the council that's looking the wrong way. Instead of facing the fact that their policies have made a mess of city finances, they search for new ways to keep upside-down priorities in place by finding new sources of money to get through another year without fixing things.

Even at the height of the recession, the old dogs who ruined the city were throwing 4 percent pay raise bones to its work force to keep them happy and to keep them working for re-election of the same old dogs. Salary and benefits now make up 60 percent of the budget.

Despite the council's contempt for free-enterprise capitalism, its members could take a small lesson from the nation's companies, who know how to fix what's broken before they go bankrupt.

Businesses, like Boeing Co., Levi Strauss & Co. and H.J. Heinz Co., have recently faced their problems and done what business does: They set priorities for their goals, emphasized their core missions, eliminated what was not cost-efficient and used layoffs or attrition to get costs back in line with revenues.

In contrast, the City Council of Los Angeles' answer for a decades has been to let things go and then dun the public to pay the bill.

Police Chief Bernard C. Parks knew full well what he was doing in demanding the council find $109 million for upkeep of the 911 systems over the next decade or so. He's seen how the system was allowed to rot along with police cars and everything else until Mayor Richard Riordan began to turn things around.

It's the council's job to heed his urgent call.

We can only hope they read the public's lips as well: no new taxes.

Economize, prioritize, rationalize the functions of the city and get value for the dollars.