EDITORIAL HAHN'S PAYOFF MAYOR'S GIVEAWAYS TO UNIONS HAVE BOUGHT HIM THEIR SUPPORT.

IN announcing that organized labor will throw its valuable support behind Mayor James Hahn's bid for re-election, labor boss Miguel Contreras made it clear that this endorsement was all about business: ``An old labor saying reminds us that labor rewards our friends.''

And how Hahn has been a friend to labor!

Not to the city's residents, businesses or even most of its working people, mind you, but to Contreras and the 90 other union bosses who are doing so well off of his largess.

Sure, the roads are crumbling and congested, good jobs are hard to find, businesses are still leaving, sweatshops are still flourishing, gangs are still running wild, but the union bosses are as happy as the contractors and consultants with the job Hahn is doing.

What an epitaph: ``Good friend to labor,'' especially the city employee unions that have received three-day workweeks, healthy pay raises and such lax workplace discipline that workers can steal from the city and go unpunished.

All the while, Hahn has pushed his outrageous, $11 billion expansion plan for Los Angeles International Airport - a plan despised by all, save for the contractors and the construction unions that will do the work under agreements that guarantee only card-carrying union members can get a job.

``It's important for labor,'' Contreras says, ``to send a message that when incumbents help us, we should remember them.''

Not surprisingly, Hahn's also won the endorsement of the Police Protective League, and why not? Last time the PPL backed Hahn, he drove the chief who demanded discipline out of office and rewarded union members with the three-day workweek - thus leading to rampant moonlighting and staffing difficulties in the Los Angeles Police Department.

The city political machine is firing on all cylinders. The mayor rewards his union backers with taxpayer dollars, and his union backers repay him with their members' dues, phone banks and get-out-the vote efforts.

That's why it's called pay-to-play. That's why there are county and federal investigations of the Hahn administration's contracting practices.

And with the money and support unions give Hahn, he's likely to get re-elected, unless voters decide not to be patsies anymore. Only you, the voter, can restore honesty and a commitment to serving the public to city government.

It would seem that even the unions would eventually catch on and understand that a bankrupt and wrecked city will be bad for them and their members. But no. Rational thinking for the bigger good is not a concept that seems to get much acceptance in Los Angeles.

So it's up to the people.

End the reign of special interests at City Hall. Register to vote, work for the candidate of your choice and get out on election day and vote.