EDITORIAL NO PLAN, NO CLUE CITY LEADERS MIRED IN THEIR OWN CONTRADICTIONS.

LOS Angeles has a City Council that clamors for more affordable housing and a school board that wants to hike building fees on new housing developments by more than 57 percent to pay for the star-crossed Belmont Learning Center.

See the logical disconnect?

Such is the havoc that a generation-long lack of planning has wrought.

So while the council bellyaches about making housing less expensive without any plan for the city as a whole, the district conspires to make housing costlier while gobbling up all available land for schools.

And that's just part of the confusion.

Complicating matters further is that a judge has ruled illegal the Los Angeles Unified School District's efforts to squeeze additional revenue out of housing developments.

When the district quietly signed off on a plan to raise its fees on new housing developments from $2.05 to $3.55 per square foot a year ago, it drew a lawsuit from Doug Ring, big-time developer and husband of Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, and his attorney, Ben Reznik, a leading City Hall lobbyist.

Ring and Reznik sued against the fee and won, a decision that has prompted others to demand their money back from the LAUSD.

The increase expired Sept. 10, and the school board is set to reauthorize it at its next meeting. LAUSD lawyers have put together extensive documentation to try to give the hike a better chance of standing up in court.

It's hard to know who to root for in this battle.

In principle, the LAUSD has a point: Developers should contribute to the construction of new schools, seeing that their developments increase the local student population, as well as other infrastructure.

But whether that contribution should be $2.05 or $3.55 per square foot is a complex, technical question, one the LAUSD can hardly be trusted to answer honestly. After all, the district's concern isn't building new schools per se, let alone schools around new developments - that would require a level of forward thinking unseen in the LAUSD's past half-century.

The district's true concern is finding some extra money to complete the Belmont Learning Center, the nation's costliest school, which officials are trying to revive.

Under Roy Romer's leadership, the LAUSD has been dead set on finishing Belmont by any means possible - including, presumably, excessive housing construction fees.

But raising housing costs without a coherent plan for channeling those funds into future needs is a recipe for further waste and abuse. And it drives up the price of new housing - adding $5,325 to the price of a new, 1,500-foot condominium - never a good idea in a city hard pressed for adequate, affordable housing.

There's no clear answer, because L.A.'s plan for growth has long boiled down to: Let well-connected developers have their way, then deal with the consequences later.

We're left to deal with those consequences now, and City Hall is left to make sense of its own mishmash.

Nothing short of a coherent and comprehensive plan for growth will prevent the drama from repeatedly playing itself out for many years to come.