Battle of the boards heats up
cont'd

Bill Hauck, president of the California Business Roundtable and co-chair of the California Performance Review Commission, said politics already infuses the workings of the boards. He said it will continue to play a role in the decision-making process regardless of whether the commissions remain intact or their functions are rolled into the governor's agencies, as proposed by the commission.

Hauck said reorganization is vital to smoothing out California's regulatory environment and improving the business climate.

"We're talking about the regulatory side of government with the boards and commissions," Hauck said. "California has the most complex regulatory process in the United States ... and it can be improved without abrogating any environmental law or existing protections for Californians."

Eliminating the boards and commissions represents Schwarzenegger's first thrust into the government reorganization business. A report that accompanied the recommended cuts Jan. 6 said the boards on the hit list "do little to advance the interests of the people of California" and that getting rid of them "will improve the productivity of state government."

The first vetting of the administration's government reorganization plan is scheduled for Wednesday with the Little Hoover Commission at a site yet to be determined. The commission will make recommendations to the Legislature next month, before lawmakers vote the total package up or down - no picking and choosing which boards to keep or kill.

Even the most ardent critics of the governor's plan concede that a good many of the boards and commissions are far from perfect, that some of their appointees got their sinecures strictly as a result of political patronage, that some of them are irrelevant or inefficient or are geared more toward promoting industries or activities than regulating them.

But some of the activists, such as Richard Holober, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, say there does not appear to be much rhyme or reason to which boards got whacked and which commissions received a pass from the governor.

"He clearly has an imperial sense of his governorship," Holober said.

Schwarzenegger also included the medical and dental boards on the target list, which drew protest from two of the governor's fellow Republican officeholders, state Sen. Sam Aanestad of Grass Valley, who is a dentist by profession, and Assemblyman Keith Richman of Northridge, who is a doctor. Neither said he was consulted by the administration.

"I have some concerns about that," Richman said of the medical board cut. "I think it's very important for boards to have members of the profession so there can be adequate and appropriate peer review."

In the end, members of the California Performance Review Commission recommended 132 boards and commissions for elimination. Schwarzenegger took them up on 88. Left off the list were agencies such as the New Motor Vehicle Board. Kept on were others like the workers' comp commission, known to insiders by the pronunciation of its acronym ("cheesewick," for CHSWC).