EDITORIAL POLITICAL VIPERS LOS ANGELES POLITICIANS SAY ONE THING, DO ANOTHER.

IN the theater of Los Angeles politics, it's much more instructive to pay attention to what politicians do than to what they say.

Back in October, for instance, the City Council backed Councilwoman Wendy Greuel's plan to create a special account to pay for hiring new cops. Money from this account would come from the millions in efficiencies that earnest council members planned to wring from the bloated departments in City Hall. The bounty of this effort would help Police Chief William Bratton get closer to his goal of 3,000 more cops.

Ultimately, the idea was to give city officials some credibility when they hit the public up for a sales tax increase down the road by meeting voters halfway. The fund would send the message, ``See, we're doing our part to dig deeper in our pockets to hire more cops. Now you do yours.''

The problem is that after a big, news-making announcement, there was no follow-through. The fund was kicked off with $500,000 saved by getting rid of wasteful phone services that should have been eliminated long ago. And that's the amount that remains, a figure that could hire, at best, five cops. Greuel has identified $20 million in further savings, but it remains to be seen whether that or any other money will be freed up in the more than $5 billion the city spends annually.

Even as Greuel was trying to muster some credibility for City Hall, the mayor, council president and others were already plotting how to squeeze more money out of the public without lifting a finger. They want to put a half-cent sales tax increase on the May 17 runoff ballot, where James Hahn hopes it will boost his re-election chances.

The deadline for deciding on the ballot measure comes next week, so this would seem to be a litmus test for whether there is any honor at all in the council.

It appears the vote will be close, with the mayor and his allies pulling out all stops to round up 10 supporters among the 15 council members.

Perhaps there's a hopeful sign in that council President Alex Padilla's truly despicable ploy to get around the two-thirds majority requirement for tax hikes was stillborn. Padilla, who had feigned uncertainty about whether to support the tax, suddenly got religion and proposed making a general tax increase instead of one solely to hire more cops and support other public safety efforts. That way it wound only need a simple majority, and have the further advantage that there would be no guarantee the money wouldn't end up in the pockets of the unions, contractors, consultants and other City Hall insiders.

Here's the lesson to take away from this: Nothing is ever as it seems at City Hall, because it's not what officials say that counts. It's what they do - or don't do.

And that won't change until there's a major cleanup of the corruption that infects city politics.