EDITORIAL AGAINST THE PEOPLE L.A. CITY HALL SERVES ITSELF, NOT THE PUBLIC.

THE most basic belief in American democracy is that our government is "of the people, by the people and for the people."

Those were the words uttered by Abraham Lincoln at the end of the Gettysburg Address, a phrase that ended with his resolve that such a government "shall not perish from the earth."

Well, if such a government ever existed in Los Angeles, it perished a long time ago.

This government in L.A. is not of the people since it clearly doesn't represent the needs of the residents. It's not a government by the people since the elections are dominated by the money of special interests and the efforts of city workers who derive lucrative pay and benefits from the system. And it isn't even a government for the people since virtually nothing that comes out of City Hall makes the city a better place for the people.

Indeed, as a recent lawsuit makes clear, Los Angeles' municipal government is actually against the people.

Quietly, so quietly it almost escaped detection, the city -- on behalf of the municipal water and power utility -- effectively sued the people of Los Angeles to transfer $30 million of revenue to the city's general fund.

The city has been doing the DWP revenue switcheroo for years to help cover the tracks of unwise spending, and the legality of such transfers has come under scrutiny. The purpose of the lawsuit was to protect the current and future transfers before they could be ruled illegal under Proposition 218. That's the law that says taxes must be approved by voters.

The city's elected leaders -- all of whom have happily signed off on this public betrayal -- argue that this is not a tax, just a moving around of money to cover costs to maintain services.

"The mayor has a responsibility to protect the revenue that pays for critical services in the city," said mayoral spokesman Matt Szabo.

What they mean by "critical services," of course, is the high wages and benefits of city workers and the spectacular salaries and perks extended to the politicians and their staffs.

What's most shocking about City Hall's current frenzy of tax and rate hikes is that the city's revenue has been going up sharply for several years, and the treasury should be overflowing with money to hire cops, pave streets, reduce traffic congestion and put the hoodlums in jail or into schools and job training programs.

But still the city needs more, so it keeps on looting the substantial profits earned by the Department of Water and Power by charging the public more than it costs to run the system. The problem, of course, is that by robbing the DWP of those profits there's nothing left to invest in the aging infrastructure.

The power outages the past two summers during the hottest days were evidence of how the basic services -- one might even call them "critical services" -- are failing.

But rather than stop the transfers, the city sticks it to the people again and again. This week, the DWP voted to stick the public with water and power rate increases to cover the cost of repairing infrastructure that was ignored for years.

The real shame of this is that City Hall doesn't respect the public enough to tell the truth and deal with the problems out in the open.

Instead, city leaders pull a fast one in court, and keep on giving away the treasury to one special interest or another without fixing the city's problems.

This isn't a government for the people. It's against the people.