EDITORIAL CLUELESS OR WHAT? OUTRAGE METER: 9.

TO hear LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer tell it, you'd think he was some country rube, a political novice who hasn't yet been exposed to the darker, seedier side of politics.

``I have absolutely no issue of ethics in what I'm doing here,'' he says of his $146,000 formerly secret fund to fight efforts to break up the LAUSD - a fund financed largely by big-bucks contractors who make millions doing business with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Really, Roy? Really?

Romer doesn't believe there are any ethical questions when a superintendent calls up his school district's contractors and asks them to kick $10,000 into a political fund? He doesn't think that maybe, just maybe, those ponying up the cash might think they need to contribute to stay in the LAUSD's good graces - and renew their contracts?

Look at just a few of the generous contributors to Romer's ``Friends of L.A. Schools'' organization:

--McGraw Hill and Harcourt Inc. - two big-time textbook publishers.

--DMJM H+N - an architecture, construction and engineering company.

--Goldman Sachs - an investment banking firm.

Just good public citizens, right? These are firms that don't even consider the fact that the LAUSD just so happens to be a major purchaser of textbooks. Or that it's in the midst of a massive school-construction campaign. Or that it may soon be seeking a Wall Street firm to sell an additional $3.85 billion in school bonds.

Oh, please!

Romer ought to spare us the Mr. Innocent act. He's no babe in the woods.

Three-time governor of Colorado.

Erstwhile chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Romer knows a thing or two about raising money. He knows how the game is played. He knows - or ought to know - an obvious conflict of interest when he sees one.

Having been in Los Angeles these past five years, Romer should have heard the phrase ``pay to play'' - the nickname for the scandal that helped to end the administration of former Mayor James Hahn. One would think Romer would see certain similarities between Hahn's shaking down city contractors to fight off Valley secession and his own attempt to hustle moneyed interests to thwart the breakup of the LAUSD.

Romer has been around long enough to know that when government contractors make political donations, the public ends up paying. Some say the gifts are ``only'' $10,000, so it's no big deal. Baloney. For the contractors, greasing the wheels of politics is simply a cost of doing business. They figure it into their bids. Somebody pays and that somebody is likely the taxpayer.

So every textbook, every new school, every bond deal will now carry a built-in surcharge - one indirectly financing Romer's would-be political action committee.

Even if, by some strange chance, Romer really doesn't know all of this, the school board that employs him should. Its members should be furious, and they should be demanding answers.

Because either the district's superintendent is as clueless he claims, or he's corrupt - and neither one bodes well for the LAUSD.