EDITORIAL CLEANING UP L.A. CITY HALL'S OLD WAYS ARE UNDER ATTACK FROM ALL DIRECTIONS.

EVERYBODY seems to want a piece of the scandal at Los Angeles City Hall these days.

First, City Controller Laura Chick started a series of audits challenging whether the public - or just the politicians - are getting the benefit from the way the city is spending millions of dollars in ratepayer money.

Then, it was District Attorney Steve Cooley looking at questions about pay-to-play trading of campaign contributions for airport contracts and the U.S. Attorney's Office impaneling a grand jury to investigate systematic abuses in the city's contracting.

Now it's the state weighing in. State Sen. Richard Alarcon, with the unanimous backing of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, is taking a crack at finding out the truth about whether City Hall is using increases in the rates charged by the Department of Water and Power as a form of hidden - and illegal - taxation.

The Van Nuys Democrat has a personal agenda in using the Legislature's authority in this matter - he wants to be mayor and responsibility for illegally taxing the public would fall at the feet of incumbent Mayor James Hahn just as the pay-to-play scandal goes to the heart of how Hahn has run the city for the past three years.

Hahn and others at City Hall are outraged at Alarcon's play, saying it's none of the state's business if L.A. is robbing the public.

Their defensiveness is understandable. The $239 million in ratepayer money being ripped out of the DWP this year goes directly into the pockets of the nation's highest paid municipal officials and the pockets of all the special interests that feed at the trough of City Hall, from the city employee unions to the contractors, consultants and campaign contributors.

Call it sad, call it funny, but the harsh truth is that in good times or bad, the insiders keep getting richer even as public services are cut and rates, fees and taxes go up.

The DWP's revenue is supposed to pay for the services the monopoly utility renders and to provide for the investment needed to make sure Los Angeles, its residents and businesses have a secure supply of water and electricity for the future.

But it doesn't actually work that way anymore.

Over the years, City Hall keeps taking a bigger cut with various subterfuges that avoid calling the charge a tax. It's sort of like shipping and handling charges on items bought over the Internet. The city's cut is now $180 million or 7 percent of what DWP takes in.

It doesn't stop there. Because the mayor and council need more money for themselves and their friends this year because of the weak economy, they unanimously agreed to take $60 million more from ratepayers, an outright theft that is officially called a one-time transfer.

At the same time, they have jacked up water rates 11 percent and are likely to tack on 20 percent or more in the next few years because the system needs heavy investment. Higher electricity rates also appear to be in the offing.

That's where Alarcon comes in with a chance to prove that a tax by any other name is still a tax. It shouldn't be that hard to do, since it's as obvious as that the corrupt insider culture at City Hall is crumbling - with a little help from the city, county, state and federal officials with a nose for scandal.