Democrats in the Legislature are prone to scratching their heads and declaring themselves baffled when citizens react angrily to the way things run in the Capitol. If they really don't understand that anger, their decision to keep the state Integrated Waste Management Board alive offers some useful instruction.
Like many parts of state government, the board performs a useful function. And like many parts of state government, there are lots of ways that function could be performed - without paying three former legislators $132,178 a year to serve on the independent board.
A path to that is laid out in the California Performance Review, which urged the consolidation of a number of state waste management programs to achieve more efficiency.
As a step in that direction, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had sponsored bills in both the Assembly and Senate to kill the board. On Monday, Democrats killed both bills.
Democrats point out that killing the board wouldn't help solve the state's budget troubles, since it is funded by fees and not the state's general fund. That's true as far as it goes, which is not very far. The fees could still be used for waste management programs without the six-figure sinecures for former lawmakers.
No one would suggest that getting rid of three jobs, no matter how well paid, will make much of a dent in the state's multibillion-dollar budget problem. But the biggest obstacle to solving the budget problem isn't the lack of money.
It's the lack of political will and the lack of trust in state government and the politicians who run it.
And when members of the party that controls the Legislature can't even decide to dump an unnecessary board that offers a haven for out-of-work former lawmakers, the public's cynicism and disaffection inevitably grow.
How do you put a cost on cynicism and disaffection? It's hard, but Democrats in the Legislature might want to try, if only as a way to understand the effect of their actions.
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