EDITORIAL ROCKY ROCKS DELGADILLO JOLTS CITY COUNCIL'S TERM-LIMIT SCHEME.

WE were beginning to wonder whether anyone in Los Angeles City Hall would expose the City Council members' phony ploy to put another $1 million in their own pockets while prolonging their stay in office for four more years.

And now someone has -- City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo. The council members gave Delgadillo ample motivation to go on the offense by leaving him out of the plan to extend term limits from two to three. The reason that was done was to get rid of Rocky so one of their own, Councilman Jack Weiss, could become the city's lawyer.

Rocky's revenge was a strongly worded, 10-page legal rebuke that shattered any possible basis for putting the council's selfish scheme before voters by pretending it was ethics reform.

Robbed of a legal pretext for their scheme, the council members now find themselves in a difficult situation: Will they vote to put their measure on the November ballot and thus show their utter contempt for the law and the public, or will they hide it under rocks where such slimy deceits belong?

It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for these pathetic politicians, so desperate to hang on to the cushy life that their privileged positions afford.

Just days ago they thought they had come up with the perfect scheme:

Get some fat cats to pay for a poll saying they could bamboozle the public into extending term limits dressed as ethics reform.

Turn to their pals at the League of Women Voters and the Chamber of Commerce to propose such a plan out of the blue; and then put it on the ballot as if responding to a public outcry, ``Four more years, four more years ...''

The worst part is the council members' total cynicism. Members know the public thinks they're all on the take from unions, developers and other special interests and wants the moral sewer called City Hall cleaned up. So they called this self-serving gimmick ``ethics reform'' and thought voters are such suckers they'd buy it.

But now Delgadillo has blown the whole scheme to smithereens.

The ``ethics reform'' provisions, Delgadillo says, don't need to go before the voters -- in fact, the council could adopt them today. And packaging an ethics ordinance with changes in the City Charter's language on term limits mixes electoral apples and oranges. It's not only deceiving, it might also be illegal under the state constitution.

So Delgadillo is urging the council to do the sensible and democratic, albeit less politically expedient, thing: Separate the two. Just put term limits before the voters, and rather than rush the whole process along, let the city Ethics Commission and the public debate the matter first.

How the council responds should be illuminating. Will members at last bow to reality, or will they continue with their ever more transparent effort to trick the voters?

How shocked they must be that Delgadillo has thrown a wrench in their scheme after years of looking the other way.

Whether he did it because he was snubbed or simply because the council's plan was rotten doesn't matter. Rocky has become the champion of L.A. voters, and the bane of City Hall. Someone needed to put the arrogant council in its place, and Delgadillo has done it with gusto.