WE'RE REALLY STARTING TO MISS OL' CHUCK DEVIL YOU KNOW IS BETTER THAN DEVIL YOU DON'T - ESPECIALLY IN SACRAMENTO.

Byline: Kimit A. Muston Local View

I miss Chuck Quackenbush. What a guy! He was crooked, pompous and not very bright - a triple threat. Well, Chuck has now ridden off into the setting sun, bound for Hawaii.

Aloha, Chuck. He says he is going to write a book about his experiences. I'll bet he calls it ``People Who Picked On Me.'' If he was honest, he'd call it ``Pockets I Have Picked.''

And yet, I miss the little devil. Better the devil you know than the one in Sacramento, right?

Here's a joke: How many state legislators does it take to screw in a light bulb? The answer: none. State legislators don't screw in light bulbs. They just . . . take money from lobbyists.

Gov. Gray Davis now has on his desk the post-Quackenbush reform package. He is quibbling about a couple of points, in his own sonorous way. (Does this guy ever lighten up?)

But in the end, he will probably descend from his Mount Olympus and sign all five bills. After all, reform is very popular these days. Why, even the insurance industry likes this kind of reform.

One bill extends the deadline for victims of the Northridge Earthquake to file claims. Since Chuck and the industry worked together to cut off claims on hidden damage, that seems fair.

The other parts of the reform package zero in on Chuck's improprieties by opening up some industry records to make it easier to catch sleazy insurance commissioners, making it illegal for future commissioners to set up ``foundations'' with money squeezed from insurance companies the way Chuck did, and making it illegal for commissioners to use department money to promote themselves, like Chuck did.

But the one thing the reform package does not do is make it illegal for the insurance industry to contribute to future campaigns for insurance commissioner, the way they did to Chuck's campaigns.

Would somebody please tell me what the heck is reformed about the insurance regulation system in this state as long as the industry can still buy a commissioner before he even takes the oath of office? Without that one key bill, the rest of the package is like locking the barn door after the horse has stolen your SUV.

If I were a suspicious person, I might think the industry had a hand in the 34-27 defeat in the state Senate of Jackie Spier's (D-Hillsborough) bill to lock that door before the next horse drives off in the next Ford Explorer.

The two parties worked together to make sure the bill went down to defeat: 26 Republicans voted against a clean election of our next insurance commissioner, but 19 Democrats either joined them or hid under their desks to avoid voting for the bill.

It would appear the lessons of Chuck have not been lost on the denizens of Sacramento. Heck, he cheated consumers out of hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody in authority batted an eyelash. But the minute he blackmailed the insurance companies out of a couple of million for those foundations of his, the roof fell in. That right there tells you who runs things.

We might as well stop calling ourselves the state of California and start answering to the State of Farm, or maybe the state of All-State. The insurance industry owns Sacramento - lock, stock and politicians. There is so much collusion among industry lobbyists and our elected officials that the state capital probably qualifies as an antitrust violation. We could end up in federal court right next to Bill Gates.

And it isn't as if anybody is going to blow the whistle anytime soon. The only time Sacramento gets a mention on the local TV news is when Anne Heche does some early trick-or-treating. The print media do report on the activity in the capital hallways, but who the heck reads newspapers, anymore? Well, you do, but you're above average.

All things considered and in retrospect, Chuck Quackenbush is starting to look better to me. He is the only politician in this state who ever stood up to the insurance companies. He was trying to rob them at the time, but still, it was something.

Sort of makes you miss him, doesn't it?

Ah, Chuck. Come home, boy. All is forgiven.