It was a landmark event when the California Public Utilities Commission fined Pacific Gas & Electric Co. $16.8 million in late winter for its documented failure to conduct required surveys of possible gas leaks on about 14 miles of pipelines in Contra Costa County.

As time goes by and initiative petition circulators buttonhole more Californians outside big box stores and shopping malls, it becomes obvious that all three state tax increase initiatives now in the works cannot pass.

A loud hissing contest on California’s left political flank began weeks before the state’s largest health insurance companies announced the other day they plan to raise average rates by 8 percent to 14 percent for thousands of consumers with individual policies – well over twice the 3.6 percent increase in their annual costs.

Just in case anyone doubts that repeated, seemingly perpetual, state budget crises don’t have real-life effects on ordinary citizens, check out what’s already happened and what’s about to happen to education at almost every level in California.

It’s almost impossible to get California’s massive 53-member delegation in the House of Representatives to pull together on anything. They can’t even agree that action is needed to alleviate the housing foreclosure crisis.

Pinpointing the prime cause of California’s slow recovery from recession is easy: Too little has been done about the crisis in housing construction, values and foreclosures.

Consider for a moment what this winter season of Republican Presidential candidates lambasting each other while they traversed the countryside of early primary states might have been had California been involved.

There was public indignation when this column revealed late last year the secrecy maintained by the state Public Utilities Commission as it regulates the siting, building and design of several massive solar thermal electricity projects that soon will be a major part of California’s energy portfolio.

Imagine the outcry if students on a university campus in California set up “checkpoints” to find out whether students with tan complexions are really African-Americans, or whether students heard conversing in Spanish are citizens or illegal immigrants. Screams of protest would rise if students set up similar barriers to check whether olive-complexion schoolmates are outfitted with suicide bombs, or if anyone stopped students of any type demanding to know their sexual orientation.

When California voters begin thinking seriously next fall about the propositions they’ll vote up or down, one currently circulating might stand out as eminently sensible: