EDITORIAL GOVERNMENT DISCONNECT CITY STREET SERVICES BUREAU SHOWS WHAT'S WRONG WITH LOS ANGELES' BUREAUCRACY.

POTHOLES in our streets, crackpots in our government.

It's hard to know which is worse: that L.A. roadways are pockmarked with small craters, or that the city bureaucracy that's charged with fixing them couldn't care less.

When auditors from City Controller Rick Tuttle's office called the Street Services Bureau's pothole hotline, they found that they were often put on hold for long periods of time - an average of 12.5 minutes and sometimes as long as 45 minutes.

That's when they got through at all!

Many of the calls were promptly disconnected. And even when they did get through, a third of the time operators never bothered to take the pertinent information - like where they could find the potholes that they were supposed to repair.

Bureaucratic arrogance and unresponsiveness are, of course, nothing new. Sadly, we've come to expect long lines, indifference and disrespect when we have to do business with our government.

Still, the Street and Services Bureau appears to be in a league of its own, considered to be extra slow and unresponsive, even by government standards.

The City Controller's Office, according to its audit, ``ranks the cooperation given to its audit team by bureau management to be the worst experienced during the director of auditing's last nine years of conducting independent audits of city agencies.''

Usually, the bureaucrats offer some sort of sympathetic explanation for slow response times - it's been a busy day, our computer is down, etc.

Street Services General Manager Greg Scott, however, has offered the weakest excuse we've heard yet. He says that the controller's audit came at a time when his office was understaffed - out of its 12 telephone operators, one was in the hospital and three others had recently been promoted without being replaced.

That lame defense is a quick summary of all that's wrong with city government, where elected officials, bosses and employees are used to giving themselves priority over serving the public.

Too often, bureaucracy exists for its own sake, creating cushy, secure jobs with good benefits for employees, without any accountability to the taxpayers or concern for the needs of the public.

Even if the Street Services Bureau were understaffed, that would explain only the long hold times. It's not an excuse for disconnects or employees not taking down critical information. Those shortcomings are the simple result of incompetence and indifference.

No wonder our potholes don't seem to get filled. Don't bother trying to call anyone and complain about it - you'll only get disconnected.