A decade ago, a state commission described California as the "perfect job-killing machine" because of its tax structure, complex regulatory climate and high business costs, particularly those for workers' compensation.

The commission's report laid the groundwork for changes in all three areas, including an overhaul of workers' compensation. And a couple of years later, the state's economy, which had been mired in a deep recession, boomed anew.

Cause and effect or mere coincidence?

After a half-decade of expansion, especially in high-tech, California fell into the doldrums again, more or less in coincidence with a national slow-down, and the technology sector dropped the hardest. Now we are in what the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy calls "a jobless recovery."

Aside from the recall directed at Gov. Gray Davis and the budget crisis, the most burning political issue in California today is its economy. It's the top issue on the minds of voters as they prepare to vote on Davis' recall and choose a successor should he be ousted, it's a rhetorical touchstone for those on the recall campaign trail, and it has permeated the just-concluded legislative session.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the leading Republican candidate, has adopted Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign theme, "It's the economy, stupid," promising "to stop the taxing, stop the overregulating and bring comprehensive reform to our workers' compensation system."

Democrats, of course, see the situation differently. While Democratic presidential candidates bemoan the sluggish economy and lay blame at the doorstep of the Republican White House, in California, Democrats are seeing a rosy economic picture and giving the embattled Davis credit.

"Jobs aren't fleeing California," Art Pulaski, the state's top labor leader, said in response to Schwarzenegger's criticism, calling the Republican's comments "ludicrous." The state AFL-CIO cites its own set of statistics indicating that things are going well in the state.

Business organizations picked up the wordage of the decade-old commission's report, labeling as "job killers" hundreds of bills that moved through the Legislature this year at the behest of unions, environmentalists, consumer advocates and other liberal interest groups. While employers were able to stop, or water down, a number of the measures, the session that ended Saturday will go into the record books as the greatest outpouring of business-opposed legislation in recent history.

The liberal-dominated Legislature passed a flock of new business regulations, expanded opportunities for lawyers to sue on labor disputes and other issues, imposed millions of dollars in new administrative fees and, most importantly, approved a pioneer program requiring employers to provide health care insurance to their workers.

The question is, therefore, framed: Did the Legislature merely enact long-overdue and reasonable protections for workers and consumers, or did it make California so hostile to business that it will be unable to generate jobs for the quarter-million new workers who join the labor force every year?

The rhetoric on both sides is so dense that it's impossible -- at least now -- to provide a rational answer. There's no question that what the Legislature wrought will impose billions of dollars in new costs on employers, especially for health care. But are they too onerous to be absorbed and so far out of line with other states that California will become an investment pariah?

We don't even know the net effects of the one major pro-employer act of the session, a modest reform of workers' compensation aimed at slowing or reversing double-digit increases in costs for that program. Democrats say it will cut costs by $5 billion to $6 billion a year, but the data to support the claim is shaky. Even if it's true, Republicans say it's a tiny dent in a system whose costs have tripled to nearly $30 billion a year in the past few years.

California sorely needs a source of unbiased economic analysis to tell us what real-world effects are likely from what the Legislature wrought. There is no such source, so we can only wait to see how the state's economy fares vis-à-vis the national economy in the next couple of years.