EDITORIAL ENOUGH IS ENOUGH SCHOOL OFFICIALS HAVEN'T MADE CASE FOR HIGHER TAXES.

NO one can say that the public has been anything but generous in its commitment to pay big tax bills to rebuild the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Three times in recent years, voters have approved bond measures, even though it means a hard hit to their pocketbooks. The cost is approximately $88.84 per $100,000 of assessed property value - that can come to about $500 a year, based on the median price of homes today.

And that comes on top of all the other money that taxpayers cough up to fund education and other government programs.

But enough is enough.

Officials of the LAUSD are gearing up in November for a fourth construction bond worth $3.85 billion more, even though they have given no transparent accounting of how the billions they've already collected are being spent.

And it doesn't stop there.

School board member David Tokofsky has proposed putting a $150-a-year parcel tax on the November ballot, too, ostensibly to pay for smaller class sizes and more campus police.

He believes rightly that kids need not just new schools, but also teachers who are well-trained, adequate supplies of books and other supplies, and safe campuses.

But he's wrong in proposing a parcel tax to pay for it.

A parcel tax is the worst, most regressive kind of tax there is - a mansion in Bel-Air pays the same amount as a cottage in Pacoima. The inequity of that hasn't stopped the unions and school officials from drooling at the thought of all that money, although they hope to trick the public into making it easier to approve parcel taxes before they bring it before voters next year.

Then, there's the issue of whether the district even needs the money.

LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer has done nothing to inspire confidence that he's created a lean and efficient bureaucracy or fundamentally reformed the system. The district is still top-heavy with overpaid and underachieving bureaucrats, a system that does more to damage education than it does to inspire students and parents.

Before school board members decide to back this foolhardy tax idea and waste even more taxpayer money selling it, they should take a lesson from the failed L.A. County half-cent tax measure last year.

The proposal to hike the sales tax to pay for more cops failed not because voters don't support having more police officers patrolling the streets, but because elected officials couldn't show voters they are spending the money they have wisely.

They were asking for more taxpayer money even as they continued to waste what they had on giveaways to special interests and pet projects. Voters wisely didn't buy it.

Indeed, the current budget situation proves that voters were right to distrust the claims that criminals would run wild if the sales tax wasn't increased. Less than a year later, both the city and county of Los Angeles have budgetary windfalls ($1 billion for the county) that allow them to hire more cops - if they can find qualified candidates.

Similarly, LAUSD officials can't justify asking the public for money when they haven't cleaned up their own mess or created a system of accountability. No matter how ardently voters support education, they just can't trust that the money will be used wisely. Not when school officials resist things that might benefit education, such as merit raises for excellent teachers, but protect tenure and other rules that protect incompetent teachers and administrators.

It's true that the school districts aren't getting all the money they think they ought to from Sacramento because of the budget crisis, but they still are getting more than last year and will get all the money they are due soon enough.

As we saw with city and county revenue, things change. And only when a bureaucracy has done everything within its power to control costs, create accountability and earn the public trust should it turn to the public for more money.