Sacramento Bee, Sunday, Jan. 23, 2005. Front Page.

Battle of the boards heats up
Foes say governor's plan to cut state panels favors business donors.

By Andy Furillo -- Bee Capitol Bureau

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to get rid of the Commission on Health and Safety and Workers Compensation.

It's an agency credited by both labor and management with providing solid analysis of issues arising in the state's contentious workers' comp wars. But activists say it also ran afoul last year of a big Schwarzenegger contributor - the pharmaceutical industry - when it put out a report recommending the system bring its prescription drug costs in line with Medi-Cal payouts.

Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, wants to keep the New Motor Vehicle Board, despite the fact that his own California Performance Review Commission recommended it be axed.

The board, on which car dealers are heavily represented, has been criticized by consumer advocates as favoring the interests of the dealers. But the California Motor Car Dealers Association argued to keep the board up and running, and the governor, who has accepted more than $1 million in campaign contributions from car dealers over the past year and half, gave the panel a pass.

In the battle taking shape over the administration's plan to eliminate 88 state boards and commissions, consumer rights activists, labor leaders and others accuse the Republican governor of doing favors for business interests who are major campaign contributors by proposing to kill off some boards while keeping others.

Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, said the shakeout among the boards and commissions suggests to him that Schwarzenegger "is becoming the biggest corporate-interest, special-interest governor in the state's history."

"He's surrounded himself with big business interests, and he is basically implementing their programs," Pulaski said. "That is not a good balance for California."

Gubernatorial spokeswoman Ashley Snee disputed the notion of the governor working as a front man for an alleged corporate agenda. She said the functions of the boards and commissions proposed for elimination will continue within various executive-level agencies and that they were evaluated solely on the basis of whether they are performing on behalf of the populations they were designed to serve.

"The governor is following the people's agenda, the people who sent him to Sacramento to reform government and make it more responsive," Snee said.