EDITORIAL AIRPORT ARROGANCE HAHN, COUNCIL IGNORE SERIOUS FLAWS IN LAX EXPANSION PLAN.

STATE Sen. Richard Alarcon has offered a plan for handling Los Angeles' future airport needs that's ambitious, bold and forward-looking.

In other words, a plan that's nothing like Mayor James Hahn's.

Alarcon, a candidate for mayor, wants to build a second international airport to complement LAX, this one in northern L.A. County. The idea is to spread the costs and burdens of international air travel throughout the region - an idea nominally embraced by pretty much everyone in local government, but which practically no one in local government has made any real effort to implement.

That would apply most of all to Hahn, who seems more interested in pleasing the unions, contractors and consultants that stand to profit from his plan than the public, which actually wants to travel by air safely and economically while not worsening the congested 405 Freeway and Westside traffic corridor.

While the mayor talks a good game about regionalization, his massively expensive plan for Los Angeles International Airport - $11 billion and rising - is an unmistakable effort to funnel yet more passengers through LAX. The result would be higher air fares, more traffic congestion and an increased security risk.

That's why the county Board of Supervisors and so many other officials oppose the Hahn plan, and why it was headed for the scrap heap where it belongs before Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski came up with a scheme to pretend most of the plan - the tearing down of half the airport, the centralization of all check-in and other outlandish features - will never come to pass. Only the lackeys on the City Council could fall for that and keep a straight face as they voted to approve the entire plan.

Alarcon may not have the perfect solution to regionalizing air-travel services, but he has tried to spark an honest debate. He proposes building a whole new airport if the city refuses to work cooperatively to expand Palmdale and Ontario airports, both of which it owns.

It is hard to see how city officials could give in so easily to special interests on the LAX expansion without even exploring the possibility of regionalizing air service. More than $100 million in public money has been spent developing the LAX plan but only lip service has been paid to regionalization.

Credit county officials for going to court to block the plan.

Credit Alarcon for proposing an alternative.

Credit the other three major candidates for mayor - Bob Hertzberg, Bernard Parks and Antonio Villaraigosa - for opposing the Hahn plan.

While the voices of reason are speaking loudly, Hahn and the City Council aren't listening - and they won't unless voters speak up loudly on March 8.