EDITORIAL GREUEL'S BIG CHANCE COUNCILWOMAN RISKS LETTING HER GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY TO LEAD SLIP AWAY.

AS the Los Angeles City Council's newest member, Wendy Greuel has ambitiously sought to take on the position of city savior, the reformer willing to think outside the box to hold Los Angeles together.

She has coupled her ardent opposition to San Fernando Valley secession with an equal commitment to a citywide borough system. Unlike most of her colleagues, she seems to understand that the best bet for City Hall to keep Los Angeles united is to surrender power to local communities.

Yet having staked out a bold position, Greuel now finds herself timidly being pushed around by the City Hall machine.

On Tuesday, the council's Education and Neighborhoods Committee, following a detailed script set forth by the council overlord and chief legislative analyst, Ron Deaton, put out a request for more information on how a borough system would operate.

Greuel, a committee member, missed the meeting to attend another one. That mistake calls into question her commitment to really fighting for a genuine borough system.

While she was away, her colleagues put the borough process on hold until the City Attorney's Office answers a litany of questions that the committee could just as easily answer itself.

To anyone familiar with the machinations of City Hall - and that should include Greuel, who spent 10 years working for former Mayor Tom Bradley - such requests are little more than cheap delaying tactics. And if a borough plan is going to save the city from secession, time is of the essence.

City officials have only until July 17 to get a borough proposal before the City Council, which would have only until Aug. 2 to vote it up or down if the proposal is to go before voters, along with the secession issue, on Nov. 5.

The City Hall obstruction machine is doing its best to smother boroughs in bureaucracy, and Greuel seems powerless or unwilling to stop it.

The mess is in no small part her own making. The borough plan Greuel put forward, which was scarce on details and would set up a commission to make the tough decisions over the next two years, invited the sort of hemming and hawing that's come from City Hall.

Then, when former Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg proposed a comprehensive borough plan that's practically ballot-ready, Greuel declined the chance to get behind it and make it her own.

Hertzberg's vision for bringing democracy to Los Angeles challenged Greuel and all at City Hall to make a choice: Give up power willingly or face losing it entirely through Hollywood and San Fernando Valley secession.

Maybe Greuel thought that merely proposing the idea of community empowerment, without following through with a detailed plan or a willingness to fight, would be enough, that her good intentions alone would carry the day in City Hall - and with voters. If so, it was a breathtakingly naive assumption.

Greuel needs to make a choice about whether she's really a reformer and willing to step up the pressure on City Hall's old guard or just wants to be a member in good standing in the private power club.

It's her choice.

It's the choice of her colleagues on the council.

It's the choice Mayor James Hahn faces.

Will they surrender power to the people in the communities of Los Angeles, or will they continue down the road of making war against them?