EDITORIAL FAT-CAT FEEDING FRENZY.

IN a four-part series last week, the Daily News exposed just how flagrant local elected officials have become in creating a privileged class of ``fat cats'' with taxpayer dollars.

There's not a corner of local government that hasn't been tainted by the nation's highest-paid elected officials padding the salaries of thousands of people at the upper echelons, even as services to the public deteriorate.

In the county, the number of public employees earning more than $125,000 has increased more than twenty-fold since 1997.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has set records for its compensation packages, with some executives getting low-interest loans and down payments for their homes on top of their six-figure salaries.

There are more than 1,000 six-figure earners in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where administrators have seen their salaries jump 42 percent in the last five years - more than three times the rate of inflation.

But the biggest gravy train of all might be L.A. City Hall, with its armies of high-priced bureaucrats and consultants. City government's top moneymaker, Department of Water and Power head David Wiggs, receives compensation worth $326,000 a year, including a $3,500 monthly ``housing allowance.''

City and county elected officials insist that they pamper the bureaucrats for our benefit. Top-flight salaries, they say, are what it takes to lure the best and the brightest away from lucrative private-sector careers.

But if local government is being run by the best available administrators, why do we receive the worst possible public services?

Stuck with failing schools, mismanaged county foster-care services, an inadequate mass transit system and city departments that consistently fall short, Los Angeles taxpayers are clearly being overcharged.

Our public-sector officials might get paid like private-sector big shots, but if they performed this badly in the private sector, they would have been in the unemployment line long ago.

Public service has become self-service for the bureaucratic class as well as for elected officials. The fat cats feast and grow fatter each day, suffocating the taxpayers under their bloat.