EDITORIAL TESTING CITY HALL BOROUGH PLAN OPENS THE DEBATE BUT FALLS FAR SHORT.

CITY Councilwoman Wendy Greuel has poked a small hole in City Hall's wall of obstruction, and now the hot air has come gusting out.

The biggest blowhard is Mayor James Hahn, who continues his ceaseless bluster about the supposed dangers of secession. Rather than engaging a debate about the future of the Valley and all of Los Angeles, he carries on with scare tactics that are as desperate as they are pathetic.

He should take a cue from his little sister, Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who along with Greuel and Councilman Tom LaBonge, has proposed an actual alternative to secession: A city borough system.

By raising the possibility of actually breaking up the downtown power structure's stranglehold on the city's political life, the proposal to create boroughs has started an active discussion about what kind of city or cities Los Angeles should become.

But if they think they've taken the air out of the secession movement, they're sadly mistaken.

While a strong borough system that turns the balance of city power over to L.A. neighborhoods would pose a credible alternative to secession, what Greuel and her colleagues have proposed falls far short.

The Greuel plan only sets up a commission to discuss secession, a commission that likely wouldn't take office until four months after the scheduled November vote. After that, the commission would get a year to come up with its vision of a borough plan.

That's to say, voters who would be expected to choose between secession and boroughs in November 2002 wouldn't know until March 2004 what kind of borough system they'd get.

Would it entail authentic decentralization and community empowerment, or would it be a bogus charade like the Los Angeles Unified School District's mini-districts or powerless neighborhood councils?

That question is too big to be left unanswered.

After struggling for a generation to gain the right to political self- determination, Valley residents aren't going to give up their chance for an honest vote on cityhood for the dim promise that a citywide commission will deliver them from City Hall.

The time for studies and commissions is over. The idea of a borough system has floated around for decades. It was even studied by the City Charter Reform Commissions, which knuckled under to the downtown power structure and offered only watered-down alternatives.

There's still almost three months to get questions on the November ballot. That should be plenty of time for the nation's highest-paid elected officials, and the legions of the nation's highest-paid bureaucrats, to draw up a complete and coherent borough plan to put before the voters.

That's the choice that Valley residents deserve, that all Los Angeles residents deserve.

To her credit, Greuel has moved the debate along and given the decayed and failing Los Angeles power structure yet another chance to stop being despots and start acting like leaders in a democratic society.