EDITORIAL MUNICIPAL MALFEASANCE CITY WORKERS SEE TAXPAYER RESOURCES AS THEIRS FOR THE TAKING.

IT'S bad enough that the public treasury has been emptied year after year to pay for the generous pay boosts and benefits to the 40,000 Los Angeles city employees.

Worse is that city employees are now able to rob the taxpayers - with virtual impunity.

In some cases, the theft is obvious, such as the more than 300 pieces of art owned by the city that have gone missing over the years and are suspected of adorning the private walls of public officials and employees past and present.

Others are less blatant but more insidious, such as the abuse of city-issued cell phones by employees in the sanitation department that a Daily News investigation uncovered last month. Two employees in particular were singled out for racking up $7,000 in personal phone calls on their city phones.

The response by the head sanitation official - and presumably supported by her bosses up to the mayor's office - was not to fire those two employees, or prosecute them for theft, or even to end the cell phone practice.

City officials blamed themselves for failing to train employees not to rip off the city, and then proposed a plan to give stipends up to $75 month for workers to get the cell phone of their choice for less than $50 a month. This means the city is going to subsidize personal cell phones for workers who don't even need this type of technology to do their jobs - plus giving them a monthly bonus.

In other words, the city is so corrupt to its very core that officials not only won't punish employee misconduct, but they also intend to legitimize the abuses and include every worker in getting a piece of the action. Talk about rewarding bad behavior.

The way the cell phone abuse was dealt with illustrates the lack of discipline that has permeated all areas of city government. Everyone from the mayor on down treats the taxpayers as personal sugar daddies, happily wringing all the freebies they can get out of them: free cars, gifts, trips and even public relations work.

The practice won't end until those employed by the taxpayers realize that abuse of their bosses' money could get them fired, or at least in trouble - starting at the top.