An international accord on global warming? The editorial board celebrates, even though the agreement falls far short of what's needed to make a real difference. Still, it represents a new willingness by industrialized nations to tackle the issue in a serious way. The board finds something else to celebrate in the new get-tough stance by L.A. schools chief Ramon C. Cortines, who sent out letters saying that teachers who don't perform basic job duties -- like giving required tests -- will be written up. A week later, the union suspended its boycott of the tests. Coincidence? The board thinks not. One final thing to kvell about: LAPD did a great job on security for the Michael Jackson memorial, the board cheers -- but what was going on with the rest of city government? Ordering sandwiches in from Wrightwood and posting a humiliating plea for pennies to cover the costs of the memorial? The posting didn't even work; the website went down.

It's not like the city is incapable of doing anything right. By all accounts, the Police Department and traffic officers handled their end of Tuesday's event flawlessly. But in so many other ways, City Hall bumbling makes Los Angeles look laughably low-tech, shamefully disorganized, simultaneously an easy mark and a swindler, and cheap and pathetic besides.

On the other side of the fold, former longtime legislator John Vasconcellos analyzes the ingredients that went into making the state budget crisis so bad (Hint: Proposition 13 gets dragged in by its tax-restricting toes), and offers his personal recipe for climbing out of the hole. And Miguel A. Estrada, a native of Honduras and member of the U.S. delegation to President Manuel Zelaya's 2006 inauguration, explains why Zelaya's ouster isn't the millitary coup people think. To understand that, he writes, you need to know a couple of quick things about the Hunduran constitution:

Article 239 specifically states that any president who so much as proposes the permissibility of reelection "shall cease forthwith" in his duties, and Article 4 provides that any "infraction" of the succession rules constitutes treason. The rules are so tight because these are terribly serious issues for Honduras, which lived under decades of military rule.

As detailed in the attorney general's complaint, Zelaya is the type of leader who could cause a country to wish for a Richard Nixon. Earlier this year, with only a few months left in his term, he ordered a referendum on whether a new constitutional convention should convene to write a wholly new constitution. Because the only conceivable motive for such a convention would be to amend the un-amendable parts of the existing constitution, it was easy to conclude -- as virtually everyone in Honduras did -- that this was nothing but a backdoor effort to change the rules governing presidential succession.

Photo: The closing moments of the Michael Jackson memorial event at Staples Center. Credit: Mark Terrill-Pool / Getty Images

In the same Nov. 4, 2008 election in which Barack Obama was elected president, Los Angeles voters defeated (but just barely) a $36-per-property parcel tax measure to fund youth and anti-gang programs. Measure A was spearheaded by Councilwoman Janice Hahn; as a local tax, it had to pull in two-thirds, or 66.67% of the vote to win. It got 66.27%. Times endorsements may not have the clout they once did, but I think it's safe to say that our opposition helped make a difference on this one.

Hahn wants to try again, and wants to know what it would take to win us over this time. Fair question.

The subject came up at Tuesday's City Council committee hearing, at which Deputy Mayor Jeff Carr reported on the last six months of the city's still-new Gang Reduction and Youth Development programs.

When the Times called for a "no" vote on Measure A, we said the city had not shown it was ready to use new tax money properly. We explained that Los Angeles had floundered with anti-gang efforts for years, throwing money at programs without knowing whether they were working or even defining what they were supposed to accomplish. Just months earlier, the city had scrapped L.A. Bridges and authorized the mayor to take charge of gang programs and to establish standards and evaluation methods. Carr was a newcomer. It was too early to tell whether the city had improved. Here's a snippet, in case you don't want to click on the link and wade through the while thing:

The climate-change bill has, under the hands of various Congress members, become a weak cousin of what it could have been, the editorial board complains. Sections have been reshaped to benefit the farm industry, while other important sections have simply been gutted. Still, it represents the first real effort by the United States to grapple with global warming, and should pass, as the board concludes:

The House should pass the Waxman-Markey bill, and the Senate should speedily follow suit. Even congressional Republicans can't generate as much hot air as the billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide it would eliminate.

The board also bemoans a court ruling that badly weakens the powers of the Los Angeles controller's office. Under Laura Chick, the office produced important watchdog reports on the operations of city government; now it is in danger of becoming weaker than it was even in the days before Chick. The board calls on the City Council to restore these powers legislatively but doubts, considering that council members also could find themselves the butt of the controller's investigations, that it will.

On the other side of the page, thoughts on Iran dominate the page. Renowned former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky advises the West to listen more closely to the dissenters in oppressive regimes such as Iran. They might lack money, power and sophistication, Sharansky writes, but they know more about the evolution of the national mindset.

People in free societies watching massive military parades or vociferous displays of love for the leaders of totalitarian regimes often conclude, "Well, that's their mentality; there's nothing we can do about it." Thus they and their leaders miss what is readily grasped by local dissidents attuned to what is happening on the ground: the spectacle of a nation of double-thinkers slowly or rapidly approaching a condition of open dissent.

And John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, criticizes President Obama for soft-pedaling his response to Iran. The president will never succeed in persuading Iran to forgo its nuclear initiative, Bolton argues, so there's no point in playing nice.

Photo by Giuseppe Cacace/ AFP/Getty Images

Did my ears deceive me?

L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, announcing on CNN that he won't be running for governor (this time), talked about the ''abomination'' of what's going on in Sacramento, referred to his teen-aged daughter as ''the apple of my eye'' and ''my precious'' (shades of ''Lord of the Rings''), and then delivered what was for me the stunner. He said one of the reforms we need in California is ... open primaries.

Just about the only thing the Democratic and Republican parties have deeply and truly agreed on of late is that open primaries are anathema to the party system. They've gone to court in years past to keep primaries closed.

And now here's Villaraigosa, former Democratic speaker of the state Assembly and chief wrangler of Democrats there, saying that we need open primaries?

Beyond the fact that voters love the idea as much as political parties hate it, the mayor's remarks suggest that he thinks he may do better in open primaries than closed ones. Is his relationship with his own party changing? It's an interesting notion, but now we won't be able to explore it until 2012 at the earliest, if the mayor does run for partisan office, and if the ballot is thrown open to all comers.

Party on, mayor!

Photo credit: Damian Dovarganes / AP

Putting more than full term's worth of speculation to rest, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced this afternoon that he will not join state Atty. Gen. (and former two-term governor) Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in seeking the Democratic Party's nomination in 2010 for California governor. Having grown up in Southern California, I can't help but point out the most profound implications of Villaraigosa's decision: The 2010 gubernatorial will lack a viable candidate from Southern California (Newsom's fealty to the Bay Area is obvious, Brown was Oakland mayor from 1998-2006, and Republicans Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner are both techy gazillionares from the Silicon Valley.) Perhaps we should ask the candidates to promise not to chant "Beat L.A.!" at Giants-Dodgers games.

Apologies; I had to get that out of my system.

There's been much speculation on our pages -- online and in print -- about Villaraigosa's extra-mayoral ambitions. A few days before the mayor was re-elected to his second term in March, Marc Cooper implored Villaraigosa to "unequivocally declare he will absolutely, positively not run for governor next year," a position echoed by The Times' editorial board in its endorsement of the mayor for a second term. Weighing on the other side was former state Sen. Tom Hayden, who wrote that in a race against Brown and Newsom, voter demographics favor Villaraigosa. Later this afternoon, The Times will post its editorial on the announcement, in which the paper's editorial board reacts favorably to Villaraigosa's decision.

What do you think about the mayor's decision to stay in L.A. (for now, anyway)? Take our poll, leave a comment or both.

UPDATE: The Times' editorial is up; click here to read it.

Photo: Stephen Dunn / Getty Images

South Pasadenans say "tax me." In the latest in a string of mail-only votes in relatively well-to-do school districts in the Los Angeles area, voters in South Pas apparently have adopted a parcel tax to pay for schools. The ballot deadline was yesterday; votes were counted almost immediately and the finally tally gave Measure S just over the 2/3 supermajority it needed to pass.

The Pasadena Star-News reports that there are still a few absentee ballots to be counted, so the results aren't final. I'm waiting to hear back from the usually responsive L.A. County Registrar-Recorder's Office on this; seems to me that if it was a mail-only election, all ballots are absentee and would have been counted at the same time. I'll update you when they update me.

*UPDATE: The Registrar-Recorder's Office explains that these figures do not include ballots received yesterday, either by mail or dropped off in person. There are enough of those that they could make a difference in the outcome. A fuller tally is expected after 5 p.m. on Friday.

This is a property tax, sort of. Instead of an assessment based on the value of the property, a parcel tax generally bills the owner of each piece of property the same amount. In this case, that's $288 for most parcels, residential and commercial alike, except for multi-unit parcels, which are $95 per unit.

Here are the still-unofficial results: Yes, 3,991, or 67.26%; No, 1,943, or 32.74%.

See our June 2 post on school parcel taxes here. See Times staff writer Seema Mehta's comprehensive June 15 story here.

San Marino approved its school parcel tax proposal last month. Ballots are due Tuesday in the Palos Verdes school district and the following Tuesday in school districts in La Cañada Flintridge and Rowland, which covers all or parts of the cities of Rowland Heights, West Covina, City of Industry and Walnut.

Hungarians demonstrate improper water use (EPA/Attila Balazs handout Hungarian News Agency LTD. MTI)

Did you get your virtual Junior G-Man credentials with your LA Times this weekend?

I did.

Disappointingly, it's not an actual badge. But the attached plastic bag that often brings stuff like shampoo samples with my newspaper this time brought a message and a commission from the DWP.

''MANDATORY WATER CONSERVATION,'' the bag says. ''EFFECTIVE JUNE 1ST.... '' And it details all the limitations to water use that begin at week's end. In a warning almost as alarming as the ''don't stick your head in this or you'll suffocate,'' this plastic bag tells me, ''violations are subject to fines!''

Inside the bag is the part that makes me feel like the World War II blackout warden who was authorized to go around telling people to put out the lights. It's a ''Neighbors Helping Neighbors Save Water'' pack of five door-hanger messages, ''so you can alert others on your block" to the wasteful practices you have "noticed" in their yards.  I'm essentially deputized to put my neighbors on notice.

How much did it cost? How much will it save? Beats me. Maybe a lot. Maybe it'll just start fights.

Best case scenario is that it'll work in a kind of passive-aggressive fashion. The door-hanger bears good news and bad news: on one side, it tells the recipient how much can be saved by smart sprinkler controls, pool and spa covers, and an assortment of rebates. The other side lets me check off any of four different boxes, letting my neighbors know that they're wasting water by letting it flow in the street, that they have broken or leaky sprinklers, that their sprinklers are on between 9 a.m.and 4 p.m., or that the sprinklers are either leaky or broken.

This takes matters one step further than the lame ''droughtbusters'' telephone tip line that's been operating since last year. This puts matters in water consumers' hands. And just in time, too. With the whacks that are coming to the city budget, the city needs all the volunteer help it can get. I want to see the poster of the mayor, in a stars-and-stripes top-hat, pointing a finger right at us: ''Uncle Antonio Wants You -- To Shut Off the H2O!''

Really, though, I wonder who's going to do put one of these door-hangers on a neighbor's doorknob? This is LA. Your neighbors might be be putting in plumbago -- or burying a body in under the deck. We have our standards: what they do is up to them -- just so long as they don't run the sprinklers between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

President Obama does not fare well on today's Op-Ed page. James Kirchick, assistant editor of the New Republic, says his "feckless" apologies for past U.S. behavior in international forums is "paving the way for America's decline." And columnist Jonah Goldberg says Obama has "helped set the tone for the unfolding riot of liberal hubris."

Former state treasurer and 2006 gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides weighs in on a closer-to-home issue, Proposition 1A, which will appear on the May 19 state ballot. Angelides believes it would do nothing to solve the structural budget deficit, and would actually worsen the state's budget woes by forcing destructive spending cuts.

The May 19 election is also top of mind for the Times editorial board, which says voters might just as well pull the lever for Proposition 1F -- it may not help much, but at least it won't hurt. The measure would bar members of the Legislature and statewide officials from receiving pay raises when the state is experiencing a budget shortfall. That won't stop the commission that sets pay levels from giving people a raise the following year, or even doubling raises to make up for lost time. But if it helps assuage some voter anger by appearing to impose discipline on unruly lawmakers, so be it.

We also tweak L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa over his plan to seek a vote of property owners to quadruple their storm water cleanup fees. And we're saddened over the furor created by Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman, who infuriated many by announcing during a concert at Disney Hall that it would be his last performance in the United States because of the country's military policies overseas.

You know how they call newspapers the "first draft of history"? Our editorial this morning in defense of the HALO program -- a three-pronged effort to keep homeless, non-violent offenders out of the criminal justice system -- is a pretty good example. By the time it was published, it may already have been moot.

Here's a quick tick-tock. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's office was planning to hold a press conference Thursday about an expansion of HALO, which is part of the Safer Cities Initiative in skid row. The program was planning to step up efforts to help homeless people resolve their legal problems without going to court or jail -- in particular, enabling them to discharge citations by performing community service (which could include attending classes or getting counseling). Late Tuesday afternoon, one of the organizers of the event sent an e-mail to others in Delgadillo's camp, noting that the conference had to be canceled because Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's new budget wiped out HALO's funding (along with the rest of the Safer Cities Initiative). She also asked for help alerting those who'd already been invited to attend, including city council members, top brass at the LAPD, business leaders and skid row service providers.

Opposition to the proposed cut built swiftly, and by early Wednesday afternoon we in the Opinion Manufacturing Division had gotten wind of it. By the time I started talking to service providers and business people who were familiar with the program, supporters of HALO were well along in their efforts to persuade the City Council to restore its funding. They planned to make their case to the council Monday, when the Budget and Finance Committee is scheduled to review the public safety portion of the budget, among others. Curious why Villaraigosa had singled out the Safer Cities Initiative, I put in a call to his press office. Press Secretary Matt Szabo said he wasn't aware of the cut, so he tried to round up someone who could respond to my questions. No answer came by deadline, so we went ahead and ran an editorial praising HALO and urging the city not to sacrifice such programs without good reason:

... [T]he budget gap is so wide that city leaders may have little choice but to cut some programs that confer real, cost-effective benefits. But they need not cut just to cut. They must do their best to keep intact the best models for delivering services, spending tax dollars wisely and laying a foundation for better times.

Later that evening, I got an urgent message from Szabo saying that the proposed cut had been "inadvertent," and that Villaraigosa had not intended to shrink the Safer Cities staff. The mayor will seek an amendment to restore the positions. It's still a mystery to me how HALO's money vanished -- Szabo says no one in the mayor's office approved the cut -- but I care less about that than seeing the funding reappear.

Credit: David McNew / Getty Images

The clean-truck program for the Los Angeles port tries to accomplish too much by mixing the unionization of truck drivers with a worthy environmental agenda, the editorial board complains, saying that the move to eliminate independent truckers is tying up the needed anti-pollution program in court -- where it will probably lose anyway. One city program that shouldn't be lost even in an unthinkably bad budget year is the HALO initiative, which diverts homeless, nonviolent offenders to treatment programs, the board advises. Held together by four staffers, it's one program that not only does good work, but truly saves the public more than it costs.

The board also stands firmly behind California's high-school exit exam after a study found that, among low-performing students, girls and minorities were more likely to flunk the test and thus lose out on a diploma. The answer lies in educating low-performing students so they can pass, the board concludes; they will face other high-stakes tests in life, including increasingly common exams to get jobs and society should not accept that girls and minorities will forever be less able to find well-paid employment.

On the other side of the fold, Bill Maher doesn't get what all the tea-party protests were about, and thinks that Republicans don't get what the concerns of the majority of Americans are about. [Editor's note: If only he'd read the 1,688 comments that Marc Cooper received last week when he wrote a similarly forehead-slapping op-ed.]

Here are the big issues for normal people: the war, the economy, the environment, mending fences with our enemies and allies, and the rule of law.

And here's the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a teleprompter too much, he bowed to a Saudi guy, Europeans like him, he gives inappropriate gifts, his wife shamelessly flaunts her upper arms, and he shook hands with Hugo Chavez and slipped him the nuclear launch codes.

Do these sound like the concerns of a healthy, vibrant political party?

And a constitutional law professor writes in defense of scrapping the written test for firefighters in New Haven, Conn., after black and Latino firefighters scored lower, cutting them from the ranks of those considered for promotion. A lawsuit challenging the city's decision is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. The problem isn't in testing people for promotion, Kimberly West-Faulcon writes, but in using a bad test to measure the qualities needed for advancement -- especially after the city was advised by testing experts that there were better tests around.    
.