EDITORIAL CIVIC FARCE COUNCIL STALLING ON MEASLY PAY-FREEZE PROPOSAL NO LAUGHING MATTER.

NOTHING like a little comedy to liven up the holidays.

For a bit of the civic farce, all Angelenos have to do is to tune into the doings of their city officials.

The latest is the foot-dragging of what was already a pathetic policy response to the city's worsening economic picture. In October, in a rare show of fiscal prudence, Mayor James Hahn suggested that the City Council join him in freezing the 3 percent cost of living increases for about 1,000 nonunion employees.

Not all of the city's 40,000 workers, who have the distinction of being the highest-paid in the nation - just a fraction of those, many of whom work on the staffs of elected officials.

Not much of an inspiring response to a looming shortfall of between $184 million and $300 million, but it was something. Hahn even mumbled about maybe, maybe renegotiating union contracts to get some of the millions back that City Hall has lavished on its well-paid work force.

Evidently, a mere $1 million freeze was enough to shake the foundation of an elected body so used to bending over backward for its workers. The council's Personnel Committee, headed by West Valley Councilman Dennis Zine, delayed action, clearly buying the full council some time to figure out what to do.

``We want to know what the real impact is going to be on the people,'' Zine said.

That's easy.

The real impact from City Hall's past policies is no secret. The acquiescence to every union, even in bad economic times, has resulted in crumbling streets and a struggle for even the most basic services.

The real impact is that unless we want to face the situation of other U.S. cities and reduce the salary and benefit costs of public employees, we're going to tax the public to death or run the city into the ground.

If the mayor and council truly cared about the real impact of their policies, this pathetic freeze would be just the first step in charting a new fiscally sound course for City Hall - one in which our leaders make wise and prudent choices for us, instead of playing a shell game.