EDITORIAL : WHERE'S THE JUSTICE?; MILLIONS SPENT ON COURTHOUSE PROJECTS THAT MAY NEVER BE BUILT.

Apretty picture is worth 1,000 courtrooms - or so it must seem to Los Angeles County supervisors, who think nothing of wasting millions on architectural drawings of courthouses that will never be built.

Too bad a state audit on the county's insanely mismanaged construction program didn't detail what it takes to get your firm hired to draw up plans.

It's probably as simple as telling one of the supervisors, ``Hey, pal, I have a set of blueprints in my trunk that I can let you have for a steal.''

A state audit report detailing the county's mismanagement comes as no great surprise. The county's mishandling of the courthouse construction was known a year ago, when state Assemblyman George Runner, R-Lancaster, requested the audit following repeated delays in building a courthouse in the Antelope Valley.

What is interesting is the county's response to criticisms offered by Auditor Kurt Sjoberg in his report released this week.

Sjoberg criticizes the county for pursuing courthouses in North Hollywood, West Los Angeles, the South Bay, Santa Monica and Pasadena although officials knew as early as 1991 that there wasn't enough money to complete them.

``Five of these courthouse projects have scant chance of being built, yet the county spent $18.6 million on them - $9.9 million for planning and design, money from which it will derive no benefit, and $8.7 million for land that now sits idle,'' Sjoberg wrote.

One would think the county would be contrite and even circumspect in its response to such blatant charges of waste and abuse.

Instead, the county defends its silly and costly inability to draw up a list of priority projects by blaming the state.

Millions for design, zero for construction doesn't strike us as wise public policy.

Neither is it reasonable to make the Antelope Valley, which is desperate for a new courthouse, wait until 2012.

But, hey, this is L.A., where taxpayers never get what they pay for, whether it's in the city, the county or in schools.

If you're an elected representative in Los Angeles, it's all just funny money.

In the private sector, going on a $20 million spending spree and having nothing to show for it sounds incredibly stupid. In the public sector, it sounds positively criminal.

Unfortunately, the only crime here is that voters probably won't hold the supervisors accountable at election time.