EDITORIAL NO GUARANTEES SHOW US THE NEW POLICE OFFICERS.

BY signing the $6.7 billion budget on Wednesday, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has made the trash fee hikes over the next four years official.

While the approval process of the trash fee was less than honest, it's done. That means that this time next year, the Los Angeles Police Department should have grown by at least 150 officers. At the very least.

Right?

The homeowners of the city are stuck with a trash fee hike this year from $11 a month to $18, and up to $28 within four years. The estimated $127 million raised from the public's pockets will go to pay for the 1,000 new cops that Villaraigosa promised as part of his election campaign.

Since the weak-kneed City Council placidly accepted the mayor's trash fee-for-cops scheme without so much as a perfunctory question, its members owe it to the public to make sure the money is indeed used for more cops.

There was no guarantee built into the proposal to hike the trash collection fee for homeowners -- that's because such a commitment would have shown that it's an illegal tax, and not a fee at all.

The truth is that the city can use the extra revenue for whatever it wants. And it almost certainly will. City officials have a bad habit of doing that.

That is why it is incumbent upon elected officials to set up benchmarks and a system for full accounting and tracking of how that revenue will be spent. And it's up to the public to demand -- and keep demanding -- that this trash fee goes for what was promised, this year and indefinitely.

If City Hall wants to earn back the people's trust that it has squandered through years of dishonest spending, this not-quite tax is a perfect opportunity.

It's simple: They've got the money; now show us the cops.