EDITORIAL NO MONEY, NO JUICE THE DWP SHOULD BE RUN LIKE A BUSINESS, NOT A CHARITY.

IS the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power finally playing hardball with the state of California?

There's reason to be hopeful.

DWP Assistant Chief Financial Officer Robert Rozanski has told the City Council that the utility will stop selling power to the state if Sacramento falls behind again on its payments.

In the real world, business is done this way all the time. Stop paying your own electric bills for a few months, and your home will soon become the site of a permanent, nonrolling blackout.

But real-world consequences don't always apply in the public sector.

In Sacramento, there's an increasing tendency to think that the state is entitled to L.A.'s energy, whether it pays for it or not. Rozanski's warning is a timely reminder that if the state wants L.A. to be a good neighbor, it will need to be one itself.

As things stand now, the DWP has sold nearly $200 million in power to the state energy grid on credit and has little chance to get paid for much of it - ever.

That foolish policy was instituted by DWP General Manager David Freeman while courting Gov. Gray Davis for a job as his energy czar. Not surprisingly, Freeman got his job and L.A. ratepayers got stuck with the bill.

Now, DWP officials send out an invoice twice a month, and receive payment within 10 days.

But the state's budget reserves are dwindling fast. And there's no guarantee that Davis will find takers for the $13.4 billion worth of energy bonds he plans to float this fall.

Should Sacramento run out of cash after a long, hot summer, the politicians may try to pass off worthless IOUs instead of real payments. The DWP is wise to reject that possibility in advance.

It hasn't always been that smart.

For too long, the DWP has been playing the good-neighbor role to a fault. It sells the state energy at cost plus 15 percent - a fraction of market rates.

The DWP's generosity comes at its ratepayers' expense.

Angelenos spent more than 20 years paying above-average rates to build up the extra capacity that's now sold to the state at discount rates. Were it selling the state power at market prices, the DWP could give its customers a long-overdue rate cut, or retire its billion-dollar debt more quickly.

But even if DWP officials aren't willing to go that far, they're at least now on the record as opposing the possibility of just plain giving power away.

We can only hope that they're realizing that their first responsibility is to the people of Los Angeles - not the politicians in Sacramento who are eyeing L.A.'s energy resources as if they paid for it, rather than the people of Los Angeles.