EDITORIAL CHARTER REFORM TAKE TWO: BOROUGHS OR BUST.

IF at first you don't succeed, try, try again?

Well, maybe. Perseverance may be a virtue, but so is having the good sense to know when to quit. Should we just quit trying to reform Los Angeles City Hall by taking baby steps?

By all measures, the seven-year-old charter reform in the city of Los Angeles has failed.

We were promised local control, but instead got impotent neighborhood councils. We were promised an end to the City Council's fiefdom-like control of local development, but got more of the same. We were promised a responsive bureaucracy that didn't require council prodding to do its work, and got no such thing.

But hope springs eternal, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's Task Force on Jobs and the Economy is developing a recommendation that would call for a new charter reform commission to help make the city more business-friendly.

What's more, one of the task-force members, David Fleming -- who led the previous charter-reform effort and the San Fernando Valley secession movement -- is proposing some pretty enticing reforms.

For starters, Fleming is reviving a proposal to break L.A. up into semiautonomous boroughs, like New York City. This idea was last proposed around the time of secession, but once the L.A. power and money machine crushed that effort, they could comfortably ignore the idea of sharing power with the people.

If the city were to be divided into boroughs, the Valley and other regions could at last get the attention and fair share they've been denied under the downtown-dominated system of today.

Fleming also hints that with boroughs could come the breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District. "In some cities with boroughs, they each have their own school district," he says. "I don't see why that couldn't work here."

Now there's an idea worth pursuing!

Let the arrogant puppet masters be forewarned: We won't be fooled again.