EDITORIAL MISREPRESENTATIVE SACRAMENTO FAILS US ON 405, AND ACROSS THE BOARD.

THOSE looking for an illustration of how representative democracy can fail the people need look only at the California Legislature's shameful politicking that jeopardizes $130 million in federal funds to build a 405 car-pool lane in the next few years.

A bill that would have expedited construction of a 10-mile northbound HOV lane through the Sepulveda Pass was left in limbo late Thursday night. After much foot dragging, the Assembly waited until the last possible minute to pass the bill, but only as the Senate was voting to adjourn.

Alas, all the hard work to ease traffic congestion on the notorious 405 by many Southern California officials, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, U.S. Rep. Howard Berman and Woodland Hills Democratic Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, went down the drain.

Special thanks-for-nothing go to Assembly members Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, Cindy Montaez, D-Mission Hills, and Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood - the area legislators who owed their constituents something better than voting on a bill only when it was too late to matter. But even that puts them ahead of state Sen. Richard Alarcon, D-Van Nuys, who was nowhere to be seen.

These four politicians, like so many others in a legislature gerrymandered into the hands of extremists, obviously prefer to protect special interests - namely, the state engineers union - than to make life better for the people they took an oath of office to serve.

These days, the members of the Assembly and the Senate - Democrats and Republicans alike - appear more interested in playing power games than in passing legislation to make life work better for Californians.

This outrage is just one in a long list of disappointments from Sacramento this year.

Just take a look at the Legislature's accomplishments from the first year of this two-year session. Count them up, if you can.

Traffic relief? No.

Educational reform? Nope.

Environmental improvement? Certainly not.

The only substantive things Sacramento legislators accomplished during the last session were passing an annual budget slightly less late than usual and giving themselves a 12 percent raise for all their hard work.

This is a government so out of control that even a worthwhile solar energy bill that had the support of many in both parties as well as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was killed for the second time in a row. The bill would have allowed homeowners - as in, regular folks - and businesses to get monetary incentives to put up solar panels, thereby saving themselves some money and helping the environment.

Democrats - who promote themselves as the advocates of working people and protectors of the environment - couldn't bear this kind of approach on behalf of both constituencies, so they tacked on a bunch of ridiculous additions to benefit the unions and others, thus dooming the measure.

It's not quite time to call for direct democracy, where the people vote on everything themselves instead of electing people to represent them, but it won't be long before somebody comes up with an initiative to abolish the Legislature altogether. We doubt if it will come to that, but California cannot afford this kind of leadership much longer.