Most state boards and commissions meet periodically. Board and commission members are paid per meeting.

Many members are experts in their field and their service on the boards or commissions is valuable to the operation of the state. It is far cheaper to pay these people for minimal part-time work than to create full agencies with full time highly paid experts to do the same work.

Most if not all of these boards and commissions are necessary to implement the state laws or to gather information for the state. The state would not function well without them. Most boards and commissions have a small full-time paid staff that take direction from the board.

I'm not an expert but I have served on a voluntary board and I can attest that it is work and of value.

The only other alternative I can think of to replace boards and commissions would to be to have the legislature make all those decisions which would require a massive increase of legislative staff including high paid experts and the legislature still would not be able to conduct all that business.

These boards and commissions are a necessary part of the state governance architecture. They were created by Democratic and Republican legislation. Complaining about them by the Northern Division of the California Federation of Republican Women is just more hypocrisy.

Obviously some boards, commissions, agencies, departments, centers, authorities, bureaus, centers and councils are more useful than others and some may have outlived their usefulness. Some may exist only on paper and not do anything or be allocated a budget line item.

Yes there are a lot of them and their cost to the state is in the millions of dollars, but a blanket condemnation of all of them is wrong.

For the most part they are the cost of running the state. Hopefully the new governor will go through the list and eliminate or reduce the budgets for them as needed.

James Evans lives in Clearlake Oaks, Calif.