Although almost no one noticed, there was a spectral echo behind the smiles and mutual congratulations that followed last week's passage of California's latest workers' compensation insurance reform bill.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who threatened to support a ballot measure in case the bill failed, said he was "a happy camper." Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, who likes wheeling and dealing almost as much as the governor with whom the deal was made, called it "a historic day." But the ghostly echo of other historic days comes not from long forgotten cheers for prior workers' comp reform laws - in 1982, 1989, 1992 and again last year - that were also advertised as great fixes for a broken and costly system.

It comes from something that, at least at first glance, was altogether different - the electricity deregulation bill of 1996, which was passed by bipartisan votes that were even more overwhelming (71-0 in the Assembly) than the 77-3 vote that the Assembly gave SB 899 last week. The vote in the Senate last week was 33-3.

Eight years ago, despite the lopsided majorities, the cheering wasn't quite as loud. Nonetheless, it was celebrated as a historic change. One story called it a "monumental milestone." It's quite probable that the people who voted for electricity deregulation eight years ago knew even less about the bill they were passing than the members did last week when they approved the 101-page workers' comp measure. Nor had then-Gov. Pete Wilson made it quite as much of a high priority political item as Schwarzenegger did with workers' comp.

But the differences weren't that great. Then, too, the reform addressed what was described as a major economic problem. In that case it was utility rates that were calculated to be 40 percent above the national average caused by a regulatory scheme that stifled free market competition in energy supply and damaged the state's business climate.

The nominal author of the energy bill was then-Assemblyman Jim Brulte, who until recently headed the GOP caucus in the state Senate. But the real drive came from what was called "Steve Peace's Death March," after the Senate Democrat who put the bill together, who drove it to passage and who was one of the few people in Sacramento who appeared to understand it. Peace later became Gov. Gray Davis' director of finance.

For Schwarzenegger, as has been repeatedly noted, passage of the workers' comp bill is a political triumph. Depending on the count, it's his third or fourth, after the rollback of the car tax, the repeal of the driver's license bill for illegal immigrants and passage of the $15 billion deficit bond.

And with one exception, they were all accomplished with majority help from legislative Democrats, giving the governor justification for his declarations that bipartisanship is back. But the declarations sound eerily like those of the neighborhood bully who has a 97-pound weakling by the neck and praises him for his cooperation.

The story of what happened to electricity deregulation - the failure by Davis to address the problem, manipulation by the energy companies, the federal government's dereliction of duty - ought by now to be familiar enough. Just last week, there were new warnings that supplies might be tight again this summer.

And to be sure, after the spikes in rates of 2000-2001, the rolling blackouts and bankruptcy of Pacific Gas and Electric, a lot of critics attacked it as not being deregulation at all, but a sort of halfway measure that combined the worst of all utility management systems.

Certainly, the enthusiasm about the blessings of the new round of workers' comp produced strong notes of caution. Will the savings generated by the reforms really get passed on to the employers who've been paying those exorbitant rates? Will new insurance providers enter the deregulated market and thus create the competition that will keep rates in check, or, better yet, drive them down? Will workers be treated fairly, or will the HMO-type system created by the bill put them into the same runaround of denials, appeals and (in this case) battles to prove that it was the workplace injury, not some far-fetched pre-existing condition, that caused the disability? The nation's costly, inefficient and inequitable medical insurance system - really a nonsystem - offers little encouragement on that point.

What we do know from the restructuring of California's electricity market in 1996 is that for whatever reasons - and there were many - the glowing promises of reform were followed by a set of disasters for which Californians have paid dearly and will continue to pay for years to come.

Because workers' comp affects a smaller universe of people, the failures and unexpected consequences, should there be any, will be less dramatic. But in a world of Enrons and Reliants, of "Death Star" and "Fat Boy" rate manipulation schemes, does anyone doubt that even now, two days after Schwarzenegger signed the bill, some bright young guys are hard at work on it?