EDITORIAL : VAMPIRE POLITICS.

OPERATING in the dark and without exploring the alternatives, the vampires who posture as the Los Angeles City Council have chosen to suck the lifeblood out of the San Fernando Valley.

The same hypocrites who closed Mission Canyon and other landfills wrung their hands in agony Tuesday over how diesel garbage trucks poison the air they and their constituents breathe.

Then these venomous little bats voted 9-5 to reopen and expand Sunshine Canyon landfill and risk poisoning the air, land and water of thousands of residents and schoolchildren less than half a mile away in Granada Hills.

While five council members from the Valley stood up for their community, two others who represent gerrymandered districts partially in the Valley - Cindy Miscikowski and John Ferraro - betrayed their constituents and joined the bloodsucking majority in inflicting this terrible wound.

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said such landfills may be unattractive but are as necessary as freeways to a large urban area.

``We create garbage. We create trash. And the reality is, it's gonna go somewhere,'' she said.

Why not in her district? There's a giant hole under Hollywood Boulevard that's not being used for much. We can fill the subway tunnels with it.

Is it payback time for the Valley pushing a cityhood study and daring to question how the city operates?

Why was the council in such a rush to push this through, just as the sun was rising on other worthy proposals? Why not listen to dump operators in neighboring counties urging a delay in Tuesday's vote and give them time to bid on the contract to haul city trash?

It's noteworthy they admitted not having explored the options and not having enough information to vote in public on what to do with the franchise fees or whether to get rid of diesel trucks because they didn't have the information.

The only major requirement was monitoring the air at nearby Van Gogh Elementary School because they didn't want the blood of young cancer victims on their hands - at least not without being able to claim they tested the playground air once a year.

Everything else to ease the pain on the Valley was voted down.

They killed a proposal to scale back the hours of operation.

They refused to vote in public on giving the Valley $5 million or $6 million a year in Sunshine's franchise fees to offset the burden of living with a dump, reserving the right to connive a way to cheat the community out of a chunk of the cash.

They will vote next week on the final motion and then fly back underground to sleep off their orgy.

Only Mayor Richard Riordan with his veto or a judge with respect for the law and the people of this community can drive a stake through their contemptible hearts.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

PHOTO (1) John Ferraro

City Councilmember

(2) Cindy Miscikowski

City Councilmember