EDITORIAL BAD NEIGHBORS ... BFI TAMPERS WITH LOCAL COUNCIL.

IF there were an award for the city's worst neighbor, Browning Ferris Industries - which operates and hopes to expand Sunshine Canyon Landfill in Granada Hills - would have won it long ago. But with its latest dirty trick, the company seems to be aiming for some kind of lifetime-achievement prize.

In an affront to the very idea of grass-roots representative government, the company has hired a member of the Downtown Neighborhood Council as a paid lobbyist. This marks an unsubtle attempt to corrupt local council politics in the same way City Council politics have been corrupted.

Without explicitly mentioning that she's on the BFI payroll, the Downtown Neighborhood Council member, Wendy Brugett, has been offering to deliver a presentation on Sunshine Canyon to other neighborhood councils.

So if it weren't bad enough that BFI fouls the city's neighborhoods, now it's trying to foul neighborhood government, too. But this shouldn't come as a surprise: BFI has fouled city and county government for years.

BFI has worked hard to earn its bad-neighbor prize, and it's doing all it can to keep it.