EDITORIAL ABDICATING ITS DUTY CITY HALL FAILS TO PROTECT PUBLIC INTEREST IN APPROVING FLAWED LAX PLAN.

EVEN before the City Council's 12-3 vote to endorse Mayor James Hahn's $11 billion LAX expansion plan, it was a done deal. Not because it's a good idea, but because the people who want it to happen - e.g., unions and contractors - own Los Angeles' elected officials.

So the farce of a public hearing on the disastrous plan to ``modernize'' the airport - but do nothing about gridlock on the 405 or the neighborhoods around the airport - ensued.

Let the litigation begin.

At the very moment council members were rubber-stamping the bad plan for Los Angeles International Airport, the county Board of Supervisors was voting unanimously to support suing the city to block the project, based on its belief that the airport won't be able to cap growth at 78 million passengers as promised.

Add to that the move by state Sen. Richard Alarcon, a candidate for mayor, to create a regional air transit authority, and the city may have a plan that's not only foolish, but doomed.

El Segundo and Culver City city officials are threatening to sue over the plan's environmental impact report, which, they say, doesn't adequately address the negative effects on those cities. And, of course, the $500 million giveaway to Inglewood and other nearby cities inflames that wound and infuriates L.A. residents who live near LAX and have been offered no relief at all.

In fact, the mayor's plan doesn't address many regional issues stemming from the insanity of encouraging more congestion and pollution in an already gridlocked area by directing travelers from all over the region to LAX. It makes much more sense to have LAX upgrades in conjunction with growth at regional airports, but sense is in short supply in City Hall.

Either way it goes, the public will pay for this folly of an overreaching airport plan - for the outrageously inflated price and for the legal costs.

For $11 billion, all we get is a tram, some longer runways, a rental car center and maybe a centralized check-in area. That's worse than a bad deal; it's practically a con.