EDITORIAL DARKNESS AT CITY HALL MAYOR HAHN BETRAYS NORTHEAST VALLEY ON STREETLIGHTS.

WELL, it took 10 months and an official study, but Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn has at last determined what he can do to bring streetlights to dark and dangerous portions of the northeast San Fernando Valley:

Nothing.

Zero, zip, diddly - the city can't afford it, he says, sorry.

What a disgrace!

The study on which Hahn bases his conclusion is little more than a bogus rationalization for shameless inaction. The mayor's number-crunchers measured all the unlighted streets in Los Angeles, multiplied the number of miles by the number of fixtures needed to light them and estimated a price tag of $532 million.

To which Hahn throws up his hands and says he'd love to help, but the city lacks the dough.

But who said lighting the city was an all-or-nothing proposition?

Most unlighted neighborhoods in Los Angeles - such as Brentwood and some rural areas - don't want streetlights. Yet for no good reason, the cost of lighting them was included in the city's report.

How hard would it have been, with all of City Hall's high-priced brain power, to make a reasonable determination of how many miles of unlit roads don't need lighting and subtract the lights for them from the 88,704 total the city came up with?

Then, with a little help from City Council members' huge staffs, they could have identified the needy areas where people want lights and need them to reduce crime.

All it would take then is some logical prioritization. Maybe there's not enough cash on hand to light every dark street in Los Angeles, but the city could begin with those needing it most, such as those with the highest crime rates.

But Hahn's mathematical wizards made no attempt to determine the city's actual streetlighting needs, let alone how many of those needs could reasonably be met. Instead, they spent 10 months completing what could have been a 10-minute calculation, with the seeming intent of ringing up as high a bill as possible.

Their study is a sham, and so is Hahn's cynical response to it.

These may be tough times, but that hasn't stopped the city's Department of Water and Power from investing millions into a high-risk electric-scooter venture. It hasn't stopped the DWP from giving its employees a pay raise worth twice the rate of inflation, or maintaining needless, multimillion-dollar public relations contracts.

City Hall's problem isn't that it lacks the funds for new streetlights. It's that Mayor Hahn and the City Council lack the will to tackle the city's problems. But we all knew that, didn't we?