EDITORIAL BIG-BUCKS BUREAUCRATS CITY HALL MAKES AND BREAKS ITS OWN RULES.

WANT a job as a top bureaucrat in the city of Los Angeles, but are worried about eking out a living on the paltry maximum $284,000 salary?

Fear not.

The city's pay ceiling for department heads is easily lifted by such simple maneuvers as paying a $42,000-a-year housing allowance.

City Councilman Nick Pacheco explains: ``Don't worry about what the salary range says because we can always augment your pay by giving you a housing allowance.''

And in a 12-2 vote, that's exactly what Pacheco and his colleagues on the council did Wednesday when they awarded David Wiggs, the new general manager of the Department of Water and Power, what amounts to a $326,000 salary.

The council circumvented its own salary-level rules by granting Wiggs a whopping $3,500 a month, ostensibly to cover his housing expenses.

This is Los Angeles, where the rules are made to be broken, by the very people who make them.

No one on the council, nor, for that matter, Mayor James Hahn, pretends that Wiggs' ``housing allowance'' has anything to do with keeping a roof over the new DWP chief's head. It's an accounting gimmick that lets the council pad his paycheck while remaining technically in compliance with the law.

That raises the obvious question of why the council bothers to pass such restrictions in the first place if it has little or no intention of honoring them.

The sad answer is: To fool the public.

Average Angelenos are disgusted about the prospect of a massive bureaucracy filled with with six-figure salary-earners who can't seem to competently provide basic public services. So the council, in an attempt to look like it takes the public's concerns seriously, imposes a cap (albeit a very high one) on how much public officials can earn.

It's all for show, because, as Pacheco so deftly explained, the council enjoys the privilege of applying its own rules selectively.

The deal makes Wiggs, a veteran municipal utility executive, the highest-paid public official in the city, which has the highest-paid public officials in the nation.

It puts him in the ever-expanding club of city bureaucrats earning more than $200,000 a year. The other members of the lucky seven are Chief Legislative Analyst Ron Deaton, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, harbor head Larry A. Keller, airports head Lydia H. Kennard, Fire Chief William R. Bamattre and Planning Director Con Howe.

Wiggs will be making nearly twice as much as the mayor. The annual value of his housing allowance alone is $42,000 - more than most residents of this city make at all.

Maybe that's what top-flight energy executives go for, and maybe Wiggs is even worth the price tag. (Time will tell.)

But if Wiggs honestly deserves $326,000 a year, the council should be honest about paying him that much. If it's not going to obey its own laws, it should at least have the courage to rewrite them.