EDITORIAL KO'D ON OT.

THE city of Los Angeles last year paid out a staggering $135 million in overtime to city workers, or $10 million more than it cost to build the Mars Climate Orbiter.

The orbiter, you may recall, burned up before landing on Mars because nobody realized the navigation data was in English units instead of metric. In other words, nobody was communicating.

Earth to L.A. - taxpayers are on the verge of exploding as well.

When half of the city's 40,000 employees earn overtime, it's a sure bet communication, oversight, quality control and management have broken down, as City Controller Rick Tuttle noted in exposing this wretched excess.

Are the city's taxpayers getting what they paid for?

Not when there's a backlog of 4,000 miles of deteriorating streets that need repaving. Not when the city can't hire enough dog catchers to round up the thousands of stray and wild dogs that roam neighborhoods and threaten people.

Viewed another way, that $135 million is enough money to pave 9,000 more miles of L.A.'s crumbling streets in one year. The mayor's budget proposes the ``largest street resurfacing program in the city's history'' - which at 245 miles is still 15 miles short of matching the rate of deterioration.

It's enough money to trim 2.58 million more trees a year.

Or put 4,300 more cops on the streets.

Or make a major dent in paying claims in the Rampart police corruption scandal.

Instead, what did taxpayers get for their money?

Well, $478,399 went to pay overtime for 11 electricians working at the Convention Center, and another 10 communication electricians made $342,691 in overtime. That means each person had to work about 1,300 hours of overtime, the controller's office said. In the case of six workers, they more than doubled their base salary of $50,000 by making $105,000.

Convention Center folks said the staff has been working overtime to meet public demand and that the costs are offset by increased revenue from shows.

Really?

Then why does Mayor Riordan point out in his proposed 2000-'01 budget the need to increase the general fund subsidy to the Convention Center by $4 million next year, from $38.4 million to $42.4 million? And why does the budget also note that ``several high-revenue-generating shows have moved to other newly expanded convention centers''?

Sounds more like someone's not communicating or managing the center in the most efficient manner possible.

And when more than 82 percent of the people who work for the city's Airports Department claim overtime, it's time to ground management.

When overtime rises $6 million annually, it's time to call a halt to the lack of oversight and inefficiency that plagues city government.

It's time for L.A.'s city government to leave Mars and come back down to Earth. And pronto!