FOR THE last two years the Hialeah City Council has run the city with the FBI on its back and various investigations lapping at its doors. A January 1985 Herald series titled "Hialeah: Zoned for Profit" drew Federal attention. A month later, the FBI began to investigate allegations of widespread corruption in Dade's second-largest municipality.
In February 1986, after one year of interviews and investigations, a Federal grand jury subpoenaed four years of minutes, tapes, and transcripts from the Hialeah City Council and the city's Planning and Zoning Board. Meantime, and as a separate case, the alleged "Hialeah corruptor," Alberto San Pedro, was arrested and charged with numerous corruption-related crimes.

This week, after another year of silence, the FBI came back for more. It asked Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez to turn over telephone records for his private city-phone line and his car phone, as well as salary information and expense reports for all elected officials. A few days before, the FBI had also asked for 300 pages of campaign-contribution reports and financial- disclosure forms filed by the mayor and city-council members.

Mayor Martinez is volubly outraged. He wants to know where the shots are coming from. "Let them come forward and say, 'Mr. Mayor, you are under investigation,' and let's clear the air," says Mr. Martinez.

The mayor may have a point in that for too long the air certainly has not been clear in Hialeah. Irrespective of its effects on the mayor personally, or even politically, a two- year-long Federal investigation is undoubtedly damaging to the community. At this point, Hialeahans don't know which of their councilmen are above reproach and which are not; which have clean hands and which may be charged with dirtying theirs. Now, whether or not he is the target of FBI investigators, speculation inevitably will shift to the mayor himself. The demoralizing effects of this uncertainty on elected officials and ordinary citizens alike is self-evident.

Granted that the FBI needs ample time and confidentiality to carry on a complex investigation with appropriate
thoroughness. Yet, for the community's sake, the Justice Department in Washington should evaluate this investigation to ensure that it is focused correctly and that its duration is indeed justified.