EDITORIAL OUT OF HIS LEAGUE ROY ROMER DOESN'T SEEM TO GET BELMONT.

ROY Romer is just an old cowpoke.

The superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District still seems to thinks he's governor of Colorado, not the hireling of a city desperate to see its children get a decent education.

He's having a hard time bringing himself up to speed with big-city ways.

Out here in L.A., we take crimes like those allegedly committed in the Belmont Learning Center fiasco seriously - at least since Steve Cooley took over as district attorney. Especially crimes against schoolchildren and taxpayers, and crimes that ring up $175 million in damages.

To the old cowpoke, building the nation's costliest high school seems to be a joke. Just because it was built atop an old oil field oozing toxic and explosive gases, with utter disregard for environmental laws and the health and safety of the 5,000 who were supposed to attend Belmont, is no reason for Romer not to have a good laugh.

Romer has taken Belmont so lightly that, without blinking an eye, he reinstated five top administrators suspended for their role in the scandal and coerced the school into moving toward completing it - much to the delight of the downtown law firm O'Melveny & Myers, which could face major liability for its bad advice to the LAUSD about the property.

If laws were broken and crimes committed, as LAUSD Inspector General Don Mullinax has alleged and Cooley's investigators believe, the full force of the law should be brought down on those responsible.

This isn't cattle rustling - a crime Romer might understand - it's a lot more serious, and it needs the full investigation D.A. special assistant Anthony Patchett is conducting.

When Romer's proposal went out last week for a private company to come up with a plan to complete Belmont or to sell the property, Patchett properly warned LAUSD that the site is a ``crime scene'' and must not be disturbed until the investigation is complete.

But the former governor doesn't much respect these big-city ways, and he blew a gasket, complaining Cooley was grandstanding and trying to intimidate him.

Maybe that's what they call it in Colorado, but here it's called law and order.

Accountability doesn't seem to matter much to the old cowpoke, any more than the taxpayer dollars he's been throwing away without any benefit to the children he is paid handsomely to educate.

True to his code, Romer noted pointedly that the Belmont fiasco didn't happen on ``my watch,'' so he has no responsibility for its past. And he wants no responsibility for its future, either, which is why his plan for finishing the school includes a crazy indemnification scheme that would absolve the LAUSD of all responsibility for what might possibly go wrong.

That's Romer's idea of cleaning up a mess: Washing his own hands of responsibility.

You can bet that when the old cowpoke rides off into the sunset one of these days singing ``Happy Trails to You,'' he will take no responsibility for the continuing failures of the LAUSD or the bloated salaries and bureaucracy he's created.

Instead of lecturing the district attorney on his responsibilities, Romer ought to start taking responsibility for his own actions.