EDITORIAL MONEY FOR NOTHING SOARING PUBLIC PAYROLLS RIP OFF TAXPAYING PUBLIC.

ACROSS the board, state and local governments in California grow bigger and more expensive, yet the services they provide get ever poorer and more scarce.

The results are devastating for the quality of life in Southern California.

The roads are crammed and in disrepair. The schools are laying off nurses and counselors. The Los Angeles Police Department is thousands of officers short of a complete force.

And it's not hard to figure out why.

A Daily News analysis confirms what anecdotal evidence has long suggested: Salaries and benefits for public employees have soared beyond control, growing far faster than the rate of inflation, the rise in private sector incomes or the public's ability to pay them.

Overall, the cost of wages and benefits in the public sector has grown at twice the rate of inflation over the last five years. In some places, like the Los Angeles Unified School District, it's tripled.

And that's not even including generous public employee pension plans that allow some bureaucrats to retire in their 50s with 90 percent of their salary.

Compare that to inflation, which increased by a mere 17 percent over the same time period, or the state's per capita income, which rose by 24 percent.

In government, ample annual pay raises are a given. So are periodic, seniority-based promotions. Then there are the generous benefit packages that are unheard of in most of the private sector - free health insurance, sweet pensions and extensive sick, personal and vacation time.

If that weren't enough, state and local governments also strain under a broken workers' compensation system in which corruption is rampant. So taxpayers aren't only paying big bucks for employees who show up to work every day, but those who don't, too.

All of which might be tolerable if the public were getting something worthwhile in return for its investment, but it's not. Cities, counties, school districts, transportation agencies and the state are all slashing services, citing budget shortfalls as their excuse.

No wonder. After paying off all the public employees, there's barely anything left for the public they're supposed to serve.

And once again, it's not hard to figure out why.

Public employee unions are the dominant force in California politics, underwriting the political campaigns of sympathetic leaders at all levels of government. The politicians, in turn, reward the unions for their generosity with ever more lucrative contracts.

The result is that Californians pay dearly for a conspiracy of self- interest between the politicians and the unions. Every check the unions write to an elected official gets repaid many, many times over by the taxpayer.

That's why Los Angeles has one of the highest paid city work forces in the nation, as well as one of the worst performing city governments imaginable. It explains why the state went on a five-year spending binge in the wake of the dot-com boom, yet has nothing to show for it.

This is government by special interest at its worst - a great deal for a privileged few, and a monumental rip-off for everyone else.