EDITORIAL ENOUGH ALREADY! THE CITY COUNCIL SHOULD SCALE BACK PUBLIC SALARIES - STARTING WITH ITS OWN.

BUREAUCRATS and politicians often wax romantically about there being no higher calling than public service.

In L.A., there are few callings as lucrative.

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Roy Romer makes $250,000 plus incentives - up 40 percent from his predecessor. The new director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Roger Snoble, will earn $295,000 in salary and an additional $52,000 in benefits, making him the second highest-paid public official in the country after President George W. Bush.

Chief among the ranks of the overcompensated are the members of the Los Angeles City Council and the county Board of Supervisors. Having tied their salaries to those of municipal judges, our local lawmakers have happily watched their paychecks swell for the past decade - to $133,051 a year.

That makes L.A.'s City Council the highest paid in the country, and the Board of Supervisors the highest paid in the state.

But L.A.'s spoils system isn't limited to its political elite. The wealth of taxpayers trickles down to the bureaucratic rank-and-file, too.

While inflation has risen 11.3 percent since 1997, L.A.'s civilian employees have seen their salaries jump by 16 percent, with an additional 13 percent slated for the next three years. Police and fire employees have enjoyed a 17 percent gain in their paychecks as well. Most Los Angeles Unified employees got upward of 15 percent raises - for last year alone.

They are the beneficiaries of a political class that has spent recent budget surpluses on everything but tax cuts and improved public services.

Former Mayor Richard Riordan spearheaded the spending spree, promising that the city would get what it paid for, as top bucks attract top talent.

But the investment has been a bust. Instead of getting better, local government has merely grown more expensive. Compensation packages soar, and the payroll mounts.

Workers need incentives, not giveaways, to step up their productivity.

The city's suburban neighbors and metropolitan counterparts in New York, Chicago and other big cities all manage to deliver as-good or better public services, but with more reasonably paid personnel.

A new era has begun in Los Angeles, or at least that's what the city's newly installed elected officials tell us. This new era should begin with a revolution in city services, with taxpayers paying less for more instead of more for less.

The City Council could show its commitment to reform by holding back all city salaries - and rolling back its own.

The council should put a referendum before the people of L.A. that, if passed, would trim its salaries to the five-figure range and make them independent of the pay scales for municipal judges.

That would be a welcome sign of respect for L.A. taxpayers, and a promise that the end of public-sector giveaways is finally at hand.