As governor three decades ago, Jerry Brown embraced the questionable practice of allowing the Legislature to make appointments to state boards and commissions, many of whose members are paid high salaries and wield substantial powers.
He implicitly encouraged the Legislature to create a spate of new boards and expand existing ones with legislative appointees, and they became vehicles for political patronage for ex-staffers and out-of-work politicians.
Brown's successor, George Deukmejian, looked askance at the practice and refused to approve any more new boards or board expansions with legislative appointees – a pledge that held until very late in his eight-year governorship, when he cut a political deal involving a new board, the Integrated Waste Management Board.
The board's job was to fashion policies to reduce the amount of garbage going into landfills and other disposal sites. And the deal was to give the Legislature two of the six appointments, in return for which the Senate would allow Deukmejian to appoint two of his top aides.
The first two legislative appointees were Kathy Neal, wife of a state assemblyman with close ties to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, and Wes Chesbro, a Humboldt County supervisor and aspiring state legislator who later segued into the state Senate.
When Chesbro was termed out of the Senate two years ago, the Senate leadership reappointed him to the Integrated Waste Management Board. The job now pays $132,178 a year, so he could remain in Sacramento while waiting for another legislative seat to open up. This year, Chesbro was elected to the Assembly, where he can serve for six more years.
That's been the historic pattern of legislative appointments to the board, emulating those to other well-paying commissions with light workloads, some meeting only one or two days a month. Governors have followed a similar pattern, especially on trash board slots. One of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's appointees is Margo Reid Brown, his former scheduler. And that brings us to the most recent activity.
The Assembly has appointed termed-out Assemblyman John Laird to its position on the board, while the Senate has appointed outgoing Sen. Sheila Kuehl. Schwarzenegger has one more slot to fill, and everyone in the Capitol expects it to go to Carole Migden, who lost her bid for re-election to the Senate this year by being defeated in the Democratic primary.
Why would a Republican governor appoint a liberal Democrat from San Francisco to a plum position? He was holding it open as a possible reward to a Republican legislator who would break GOP ranks and vote for new taxes to balance the budget, along with one or two other high-paying board positions. But that opportunity vanished last week, and Schwarzenegger would appoint Migden as a favor to the new Democratic leader of the Senate, Darrell Steinberg.
That's the way these things work.
Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters.
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