EDITORIAL HUNGRY WHITE ELEPHANT THE L.A. CONVENTION CENTER CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF YOUR MONEY.

WHEN city leaders first bought into the idea of the L.A. Convention Center, they imagined big profits for years to come. Conventions would flock to glamorous Los Angeles, bringing in millions in booking fees, hotel taxes and other revenues.

It never turned out that way. The lack of hotel space, downtown L.A.'s lack of charm and horrendous mismanagement have made the Convention Center the city's white elephant.

The boondoggle can't even break even on its operations costs. On an average day, it bleeds more money than it brings in. The center needs - and gets - a public subsidy just to keep its books balanced.

And that's on top of the $30 million a year the city spends paying off the $500 million in bonds it issued to expand the monstrosity in the early 1990s.

Now audits from City Controller Laura Chick show that the center isn't even living up to its potential to rake in hotel taxes because officials have been illegally offering enormous discounts to their customers.

Chick also found that lousy management and sloppy bookkeeping have added millions more to the city's deficits.

This is what's known as throwing good money after bad. Stupid pride and indifference to the public's money keeps the woeful project afloat, buoyed by ever-new plans to pour in more cash.

First there was the ill-fated expansion, and then there were public subsidies to the Staples Center, all of which were supposed to help bring the facility into the black - none of which did.

The latest scheme is the $1 billion Staples expansion project that's been proposed by billionaires Rupert Murdoch and Philip Anschutz. The City Council has already given the plan its approval, without a moment's reflection, in the hope that the developers will deign to build a first-rate hotel next to the center.

But to the billionaire boys club, the hotel is worthless. Murdoch and Anschutz have made it clear that taxpayers will have to pay for the hotel if City Hall wants it that bad.

By giving blanket approval to the Staples project, the council has put itself in the position of being blackmailed into granting a $75 million public subsidy, or not getting the badly needed hotel at all.

Murdoch and Anschutz didn't become billionaires doing business this way. But L.A. became a city of paupers by cutting one deal after another that provided huge economic benefits to special interests at the expense of the public treasury.

We tried a multimillionaire for mayor last time. Maybe next time we should elect a billionaire.