EDITORIAL YEAR OF THE PEOPLE POPULAR REVOLUTION THAT ROCKED SACRAMENTO IN 2003 MUST TRICKLE DOWN TO LOS ANGELES IN 2004.

WE began 2003 by calling for a year of true leadership. The various crises facing the city and county of Los Angeles, as well as the state of California, demanded no less.

Now the year comes to an end, and while the elected officials we called upon have largely failed to respond, we have witnessed true leadership from another source entirely: The people.

In 2003, the year that Californians made history by recalling a recently elected governor and choosing an action hero to replace him, the people stood up to politics as usual. Exasperated by the failure, the sloth and the institutionalized corruption of government, the people demanded better from their leaders.

The question for 2004 is whether they'll get it. So far, there's cause for optimism.

A year ago, the concern that most gripped Californians was the state budget, which was an estimated $34.6 billion out of balance. Sacramento faced a clear challenge: To make tough decisions in the way the state spends money, to streamline state government and to suspend the partisanship that makes reasonable policy-making compromises a practical impossibility.

And for the first three quarters of the year, on all three counts, Sacramento failed spectacularly.

The state budget, as usual, was way overdue because Democrats and Republicans refused to work together. Worse yet, their finished product was largely a concoction of tricks - accounting gimmicks designed to make a still badly broken budget look whole.

No serious effort was made to rationalize state government, and Gov. Gray Davis padded the books with an arguably illegal, inarguably unpopular decision to triple the state's despised car tax.

Then the people decided to step in and take matters into their own hands.

They began by removing Davis from office. Then, they chose Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican with centrist leanings who promised to put the public good over that of special interests and partisan politics, to replace him.

And so far, Schwarzenegger has delivered.

In the mere six weeks since taking office, Schwarzenegger has made good on an impressive number of promises.

He repealed the tripling of the car tax, while at the same time maintaining funding to local government by exercising unilateral discretion in how the state spends its funds. And he brokered a budget deal that, for better or for worse, will keep the state's books balanced without resorting to higher taxes.

That's the sort of leadership the state clearly needed as far back as January. It's the sort of leadership that Davis and the Legislature refused to provide, and which only a bold exercise in democratic authority, like recall, could make possible.

Already, much has changed in Sacramento.

While the Legislature is dominated by the same collection of foot-draggers, at least some leaders of both parties have heard the message of recall and now work with Schwarzenegger toward implementing workable solutions. So does state Controller Steve Westly, who, perhaps alone among the state's top Democratic constitutional officeholders, has been willing to break out of the partisan mold.

Unfortunately, the recall revolution didn't seem to have made much of an impact outside of Sacramento - yet.

In county government, the status quo persists. The health and child-care systems remain in their perpetual state of disgrace - crises that should have inspired local officials to rise to the occasion, but didn't. But if there's a positive development in county government, it's the work of District Attorney Steve Cooley, who has undertaken a bold, ambitious project of cleaning up Los Angeles City Hall.

As for City Hall, it, too, seems to have slept through the recall revolution. City leaders made no effort to rein in the costs of their bloated system. Instead, their only meaningful response to ongoing budget problems has been to put off hiring new cops, while raising garbage fees. Utility rates are next.

But if Mayor James Hahn and most of the City Council seem flat-footed in response to public frustration with the current state of politics, at least some city leaders seem to understand. Controller Laura Chick and Councilwomen Wendy Greuel and Cindy Miscikowski have launched their own efforts to usher in ethics reform and thus, one hopes, put an end to the pay-to-play system that renders city government all but useless for anyone but the biggest political spenders.

Yet if Cooley, Chick, Greuel and other would-be reformers are going to make a difference, they, like Schwarzenegger, will need the help of the people. Popular support alone can give the efforts the credibility and the momentum to overturn politics as usual.

Schwarzenegger may carry a larger-than-life persona, but he's the first to admit that it takes a lot more than an action hero to stare down the problems of our day. It takes an informed, supportive populace, one that demands accountability and is willing to flex its muscles at the voting booth.

To the extent that elected officials at any level answered the call to leadership in 2003, it's because the public prodded and applauded them along the way.

That is the lesson to take into 2004.