EDITORIAL DIM BULBS OUTRAGE METER: 8.

IT'S bad enough that Los Angeles City Hall raids cash from the Department of Water and Power. What's worse is the outrageous way it manages to waste the cash it's raided.

Three years ago, the city forced the DWP to pay to replace roughly half of the pedestrian-crossing signals - those walk, don't walk signs - in L.A., at a price of $9.3 million. The idea was to replace old, incandescent lights with energy-efficient light-emitting diodes.

Fair enough, but there were some serious problems with the plan.

First of all, why should the DWP - an ostensibly autonomous business charged with providing L.A. ratepayers quality service at a good price - be responsible for maintaining city traffic signals?

Then there was the way the DWP went about soliciting the contract, without competitive bidding.

And, we now learn, it turns out some 15 percent of the lights have gone dim.

Although the company that installed them has paid to replace the duds, L.A. officials have concluded that the city is going to have to replace all of Los Angeles' 30,000 signals, including the 15,000 they replaced just a few years ago - at an estimated cost of $20 million.

So City Hall not only raided the DWP to pay for the pedestrian-crossing signals, but it then also wasted the money. And now the DWP will undoubtedly pay the new cost.

Meanwhile, Mayor James Hahn has ordered the DWP to cough up the funds to replace the city's traffic lights - the ones that tell cars, not pedestrians, to stop and go - with light-emitting diodes. That will cost $20 million at a time when the DWP is socking ratepayers with an 11 percent hike in water rates and the threat of more hikes to come both for water and power.

Once again, city officials underwrite their waste and incompetence with DWP funds - stealth tax hikes that come in the form of an endless series of rate hikes for DWP ratepayers. This on top of the 7 percent of DWP revenues that the city claims for itself, as well as the extra one-time $60 million it pilfered this year.

Do they really think we're so gullible?

There are some dim bulbs in this city that need replacing, all right. They work in City Hall.