SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to abolish the independent boards that regulate California professionals has outraged public watchdogs, who say it would eradicate years of reform that curtailed the influence of trade groups over those who oversee them.
The changes would save no taxpayer money but would give the governor complete power in setting the rules that govern doctors, nurses and most of the state's 230 professions.
In the last decade, the boards that regulate contractors, barbers, accountants and other professionals have undergone quiet transformations. Once controlled by the professions they regulated, many now are run by a majority of public members who sit alongside professionals.
Boards that are still dominated by professional members must place consumer protection as their top goal. Members are appointed to fixed terms by state leaders and cannot be fired by anyone, including the governor.
But Schwarzenegger's plan to overhaul state government, submitted late Thursday, would transfer the jobs of those boards to administration agencies such as the Department of Consumer Affairs. Many of the boards -- including those that oversee physicians, dentists and nurses -- had not been slated for elimination by Schwarzenegger's own expert panel, the California Performance Review.
"This is ill-advised on the part of the administration," said Julianne D'Angelo Fellmeth, administrative director of the Center for Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego School of Law.
"A board has to meet in public; it has to respond to public comment. The only interest in Sacramento who's not a special interest is the public interest, and that's going to be blocked out," said Fellmeth, who is currently the state-appointed monitor of the Medical Board. "We're shoving public government into a private closet where only the special interests and the trade interests will be able to go."
In his annual address to the Legislature on Wednesday, Schwarzenegger portrayed the boards as expensive and "unnecessary" and implied that they were staffed with political appointees who did little work. "No one paid by the state should make $100,000 a year for only meeting twice a month," he said.
But out of the 88 boards and commissions Schwarzenegger targeted for abolition, only four pay six-figure salaries. The rest provide nominal fees -- usually $100 for each day worked -- or no compensation beyond expenses.
